Richard Braakman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 10:01:19AM -0400, Jeremy Hankins wrote: >> * If the answer to the above is no, should we distribute them anyway, >> simply because we don't have them in a free form? > > Hi. I think my first reply to this mail didn't get to my actual point. > > I think your question here is the wrong way around. These snippets are > present in the stuff we package. The question is whether they're worth > removing, not whether they're worth distributing. > > What are the advantages of keeping them? > > - The time and effort that would be spent on locating and removing them > and maintaining a repackaged source archive can instead be spent on > writing code and fixing bugs. > - We maintain better relations with upstream authors, who presumably > would like their heartrending emails to accompany their work. > - We can keep more source archives pristine. > > What are the advantages of removing them? > > - We save some bytes in the archive. > - If a snippet turns out to be problematic, we won't have to spend effort > on removing it because we already spent that effort. > - We might convince some authors to write modifiable snippets instead.
You neglect "Debian is 100% Free Software" as an advantage of removing them, which is why you don't see a convincing case: > I don't see a convincing case here for removing them. It is not uncommon to be unconvinced when all convincing arguments have been neglected. -Brian -- Brian T. Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/