Re: What is "free software"?

>>>>> "ESR" == Eric S Raymond <esr_at_snark.thyrsus.com> writes:

ESR> The Linux/BSD community's stance is more instrumental. In this
ESR> view, the purpose of free software is to make sure hackers and
ESR> other people will always have enough tools and toys to play with.
ESR> And the purpose of the free-software culture is to have lots of
ESR> fun, push the technical envelope, and play a non-zero-sum
ESR> reputation game that everyone can win.

Fair enough. Let's take a look at what some important Linux people
are saying about this ncurses issue.

To: debian-devel_at_lists.debian.org, Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman_at_calder.med.miami.edu>
Subject: Re: ncurses back on hold...
From: bruce_at_pixar.com (Bruce Perens)
Date: Fri, 30 May 97 11:20 PDT
Reply-To: Bruce Perens <bruce_at_pixar.com>

Any new work I do will use slang rather than ncurses.

Bruce

To: debian-devel_at_lists.debian.org
Subject: ncurses package orphaned...
From: Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman_at_calder.med.miami.edu>
Date: 30 May 1997 15:29:30 -0400

Debian developers:

ESR has, IMHO, decided to start a pissing match about ncurses
development. I have no desire to participate or watch.

My frank recommendation is that we ditch ncurses entirely, go back to
BSD curses and termcap and encourage authors of free packages to use
slang.

I enclose my latest set of diffs against 4.1, in case someone here's
sucker enough to take up the torch. If so, have fun. I've got no
more time to waste on the smouldering brushfire that is ncurses
development, and I'm sick of trying to find some middle ground between
people's need/desire for an updated, bug-fixed library and the various
personality disputes that exist between the ncurses developers.

There's still a small glitch in there somewhere, but it produces the
packages, and shouldn't need more than a small bit of tuning.
Received on Tue Jun 03 1997 - 04:51:18 EDT