[ydl-gen] Re: pine: was: Re: JOB POSTING: Application Evangelist

[Eric Dunbar]

On 8/29/05, Mark Guertin <guertin at brucemaudesign.com> wrote:
> I would suggest you direct your complaints to the creators of pine in
> this case.  Most distros are released under the GNU license, and
> their proprietary licensing makes this not possible.

As has been mentioned, legally UW is limited from using the GNU licence.

> Also it is a big liability to the distribution to release
> applications that they have no control over, picture this scenerio
> for a moment if you will;  a buffer overflow exploit is found in pine
> that gives root privileges.  How does the distro respond to this?
> Does it email it's entire userbase and advise them that a program
> that was supplied to them through their distribution is now unsafe
> and they are unable to do anything about it, and that until the
> vendor manages to put out a patch for it they should uninstall it?

As has also been mentioned, this (no control) is a red herring. UW is
particularly good about fixing its problems *and* this app has
undergone enough iterations of troubleshooting that its quality is far
higher than that of the average GNU app that people run! Plus, it is
possible to patch, if necessary.

> I suspect these are the exact reason that it is not included as it is
> a large liability.  You are venting your frustrations on the wrong
> parties here.  Talk to the creators of pine to release in an approved
> license and you will probably see it get picked back up by the distros.

This is not a liability. OSS is provided *as is*, even in support environments.

> Until that point if you want that sort of software you'll have to get
> used to downloading it from other sources and/or possible compiling
> it yourself.

The problem is that most people are not able to do so and they would
benefit from it. It is *not* UW's place to conform to what
GNU-fan(atics) (fundmanetalists) want, but for GNU-based distros to
provide their users with an exceptional tool.

> All of your arguments are for naught, this thread is  a waste of
> bandwidth.

They're not for naught b/c they do expose the problems with
fundamentalism (of course, many of us do recognise that absolutes are
fundamentally destructive), and, they let people know what they are
missing out on because of some people's blindness.

And, yes, this thread isn't exactly going anywhere, but, that's not
why most people post anyway, now is it ;-)

Eric.