On Wed, Dec 31, 2003 at 03:55:49PM -0600, Ava Arachne Jarvis wrote: > [Branden Robinson - Wed, 31 Dec 2003 03:13:03 PM CST] > > Please define "decent alternative for that infrastructure". What > > specifically do you expect people to be able to accomplish with a > > parallel infrastructure when the existing suffices? > > I'm not sure what the original post's definition was, but I'd define it > as "something for which no free alternative exists"---for instance, > kanji support in Ghostscript and PDF readers is only available through > "non-free" means. Currently, at any rate. Or Arabic support in TeX. > Or gif support in image manipulation utilities---although that's less of > a problem, because of other image formats and because of PNG. Someone's > native language, however, well... is their native language. > > Actually, if we could raze non-free of spurious utilities (like games > or gif support) and provide installers for the more serious ones, then
Nope. If you remove the non-free stuff, then you will not replace them by installers, this wouldn't serve any purpose. And beside, is an installer really free ? Sure it does not link to the non-free binary, but can it be used without it ? I think not. If you want to remove non-free, stand to your opinion, and trully remove it, not replacing it by installers, especially for some stuff which we can distribute if we felt like it. Friendly, Sven Luther
