Re: Debian coding style?
On Sat, May 08, 1999 at 06:30:49PM -0400, Amy Fong wrote: Exactly what is Hungarian notation? I think that it's where you basically encode the datatype into the variable name, like lszVariable and so on, like Microsoft are so fond of in the Windows API. Is that correct? Yup. So you'll have brain-dead stuph like: for (int nI=0; nI10; nI++) ... Anybody who does that willingly must be shot. = -- Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED]Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBEThe Source Comes First! - Silvrbear Oxymorons? I saw one yesterday - the pamphlet on Taco Bell Nutritional Information pgpEr90lmgiOM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Corel Setup Design Proposal
On Sat, May 08, 1999 at 09:32:05PM -0500, Brian Servis wrote: Many modern monitors are 'plug-n-play'. I don't know how it all works but they are able to tell the video card/drivers what frequencies they support, etc. 'Plug-n-play' could be tried first, then either ask or guess conservative. That's all fine, but did we ever find out if someone were crazy enough to pay for the PnP monitor specs (wasn't it $300 or so?) that an implementation could be done and properly documented source released? Reverse engineering this just does not sound like fun. -- Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED]Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBEThe Source Comes First! - jim Lemme make sure I'm not wasting time here... bcwhite will remove pkgs that havent been fixed that have outstanding bugs of severity important. True or false? JHM jim: important or higher. True. jim Then we're about to lose ftp.debian.org and dpkg :) * netgod will miss dpkg -- it was occasionally useful Joey We still have rpm pgpV2mtgWwxqj.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian coding style?
On Sun, May 09, 1999 at 05:29:53AM -0400, Zygo Blaxell wrote: If you disagree with or don't understand the reasoning behind any of the following guidelines, you are encouraged to discuss your concerns with your project leader. Well, I did--last week, I was dumb enough to write [the Corel Linux coding guidelines] appear to have been written by someone who has never actually worked on a real Unix project in their life. [Compared to Corel's coding guidelines, which are mostly harmless, Corel Linux's] guidelines are downright _harmful_, and even worse, I wrote it in a widely distributed internal memo. Guess who `volunteered' to write Corel Wine coding style guidelines? HAHAHAHAHA Why oh WHY did I not see this coming? *amused look* -- Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED]Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBEThe Source Comes First! - Culus Ben: Do you solumly swear to read you debian email once a day and do not permit people to think you are MIA? Ben Culus: i do so swear pgpiNsbVjY5ku.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [VOTE] The second logo vote
On Tue, May 04, 1999 at 07:04:46PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman - Debian Project Leader wrote: * jeanette (ants) Concept: Debian is a lot of people working together to produce some great things, just like ants. Pros: strong imagery, official and liberal logo with the same theme but still different. Cons: official and liberal logo might be too different Cons: tends to cause people to associate Debian with bugs. * raul (swirl) Concept: magic being release from a genie bottle. Pros: simple, good associations, already in a good format (EPS) Cons: none :) I still like the swirl, but I'm still not fond of the bottle. * villate Concept: seal balancing the world Note: should be modified to be an outline Pros: playful, cute Cons: needs some hard work to modify it to an outline Seal of approval Ugh! * captain blue-eye (the current logo) Concept: modified version of Tux (the Linux penguin) Pros: people already know it Cons: too Linux-specific You left out the logos Ean provided which many people wanted to see. Generally I kinda like the DG logo. -- Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED]Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBEThe Source Comes First! - Flood can I write a unix-like kernel in perl? pgpAczQFQTEl2.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Intent to package GoldED
On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 04:16:39PM +0100, Andreas Plesner Jacobsen wrote: I intend to package GoldED when my developer-application processes From freshmeat appindex: GoldED is a very nice console full-screen mail/newsreader for Fidonet and Internet. It is one of the best of it's kind for Fidonet and quite usable for Internet. For Internet mail and news you need a program which handles SOUP packets, such as the excellent SOUPER, which connects to the SMTP/POP3/NNTP servers and transfers the mail/news. This functionality is planned to be built into GoldED in the no-so-far future. I work the same place as the upstream author and therefore have a quick way to resolve any upstream bugs. Is it still non-free, no source, etc, etc? = -- Anticipation is the sweetest form of torture...
Re: Resolutions to comments on LSB-FHS-TS_SPEC_V1.0
On Sat, Jan 30, 1999 at 07:14:04PM +, Alan Cox wrote: I'd like to propose that for now the FHS is changed to read The mail spool area location is undefined. It is guaranteed that both /var/mail and /var/spool/mail point to this mail spool area if the system has a mail spool. The preferred reference name is /var/mail. [Rationale: /var/mail is the only name available on some other modern Unix platforms. /var/spool/mail is the older Linux tradition and needed for compatibility] [Rationale2: The physical location of the mail spool is not relevant to an application and is administrator policy. It is thus left open.] Can everyone live with that and bury the thread I'd live with that, but I'd prefer just /var/mail be used and if vendors want to create a symlink for backward compatibility or even from /var/mail to /var/spool for easy upgrades, let them.. (creating a symlink from /var/mail to /var/spool/mail if /var/mail does not exist is likely how Debian would handle such a change without surprises for the user..) -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: [Waaaaay Off-Topic] Re: Call for mascot! :-) -- flying pigs
On Sun, Jan 31, 1999 at 01:50:28PM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote: We could then have conversations like this with our users: CART DRIVER: Bring out your dead! LARGE MAN: Here's one! CART DRIVER: Ninepence. BODY:I'm not dead! I'm waiting for someone not to know where that's from... -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Call for mascot! :-)
On Sun, Jan 31, 1999 at 03:42:06PM -0600, John Hasler wrote: Power, speed, and freedom: a wild horse. That's been taken... -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: LyX copyright
On Fri, Jan 29, 1999 at 03:18:18PM -0500, Shaleh wrote: I just learned that the LyX copyright file was corrected to explicitely state that linking against a non-free library is okay. This however wasn't really needed as 'The law is quite clear that the release of the software by the original authors and copyright holders changed the licenses.' AFAIK the new file was written by a lawyer. That allows it to live in contrib -- woopie. Until they have a non forms based GUI, it matters little. It matters to whomever filed the bug report after we did this the first time, obviously. =p Considering that this is the SECOND time we've done this and gotten the same response, hopefully we can call the issue settled now? -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: seeking new maintainer: lilo
On Sat, Jan 30, 1999 at 12:35:31AM +0100, Bernd Eckenfels wrote: Hello, who would liek to take the lilo package over? There are a few pending bugs, most of the dealing with the lack of an intelligent install script (which should be included in the bootfloppies, too). I wouldn't mind taking lilo, package does not look too complex (other than that I will need to make sure I have a few good boot floppies in case a version fails to work properly when I test it...) Looks like a fun package to work with, actually.. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
PLEASE remember to vote!
On Thu, Jan 28, 1999 at 06:06:04AM -, Project Secretary wrote: This is the last and final ballot. In a weeks time, we will have a new leader *or* we'll have to start this process over again because NONE won. If you havn't voted, please cast your ballot now. I know I speak for all four of us candidates when I say that your vote IS important. This is your project leader you're voting for here. Please do not forget and please do make your opinion heard! Or if not heard at least make it be tallied... = This is the last week of voting and as our secretary has pointed out, if nobody wins this election we start all over again and some of us would be made insane in that process, probably starting with Mr. Secretary himself I suspect. = And we can't have an insane secretary now can we? He'd then be forced to run for project leader himself then wouldn't he? -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: PLEASE remember to vote!
Sorry for my ignorance when deleting the mails under this topic. I was absend from the net for a longer time and couldn't read all my E-Mails. Please repeate the link where to vote for those like me who ignored the mails. I couldn't find a site to vote. Instructions are found at http://vote.debian.org, just follow the links from elections and whatnot, it'll tell you how to request a ballot and how to sign it with PGP and stuff.. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Call for mascot! :-)
On Thu, Jan 28, 1999 at 10:14:15AM -0800, Chris Waters wrote: 1. Dragon (well-liked choice on IRC) Why not a phoenix? /me poses for gimp artists being that he'd make a cute mascott... = (that was supposed to be funny, why aren't you laughing?) -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Call for mascot! :-)
On Thu, Jan 28, 1999 at 02:38:49PM -0500, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: 2. Octopus (my own suggestion) How about Cthulhu? That would also tie into Linuxes world domination theme. :-) Nah, that's the NT logo... Win95 or WinNT? Why settle for the lesser of two evils when you can pay twice as much for half as much stability!? -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Resolutions to comments on LSB-FHS-TS_SPEC_V1.0
On Tue, Jan 26, 1999 at 05:37:53PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote: Most Mail User Agents for standard Unix systems look in /var/mail/user for the user's mailbox. So if qmail is switching to ~/Mailbox, then they have to solve the problem for all of the various MUA's out there, and that is really qmail's and mutt's problem. I assume someone in that community must have thought about the problem, since people generally don't react well when they're told that they can't use their favorite mail reader because some new mail system has decided to use a different mailbox convention. So maybe any standard should not say something about the mail spool dir? Actually, it might be worthwhile to specify that if environment variable MAILBOX exists, then MUAs need to honour it? MAIL -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Resolutions to comments on LSB-FHS-TS_SPEC_V1.0
On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 02:51:40PM +1100, Brian May wrote: Also, I suspect that some people might be confusing ~/Mailbox and ~/Maildir issues. These are two completely different issues. Maildir comes from Qmail, but my guess is that ~/Mailbox didn't. Qmail has a program that will automatically convert ~/Maildir to ~/Mailbox (this is what I use). The only problem I have experienced with Maildir is that it is not possible to convert Mailbox--Maildir and programs like login and sshd which check for new mail on login do not work --- however this is deviating from the current topic. ~/Mailbox has been around awhile but qmail was the first MTA to use that by default. Debian's qmail uses procmail in order to use /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME instead of ~/Mailbox, though I have configured procmail to use ~/Mailbox for all users and for myself I use ~/.mail/INBOX/ (maildir format)... Of course, I do this with exim nowadays as qmail drove me batty and isn't DFSG free anyway. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Hardcore baby!!! Yeah!!!!
On Tue, Jan 26, 1999 at 10:45:57PM -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ pathetic attempt at sex spam snipped ] Can we PLEASE enforce our spam policy and make these people pay for their crimes against humanity? -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Resolutions to comments on LSB-FHS-TS_SPEC_V1.0
On Mon, Jan 25, 1999 at 07:09:34PM -0500, Kragen Sitaker wrote: If we must back out /var/mail (for no good technical reason that I can determine), then at the very least I think we should state that there that for all compliant distributions, /var/mail *MUST* be a valid way of reaching the spool directory (i.e., there should be a symlink there, or where the spool directory actually lives) If you include this change, will using ~/Mailbox violate the FHS? Does it already? Should it? Should we require symlinks from /var/mail/$USER to ~$USER/Mailbox? I still want to know what /var/mail gains us over /var/spool/mail. I've asked many times of many people and all I have gotten back is that it's an issue of style or that mail isn't a spool (which I disagreed with).. I am curious for the answer to this, so far I have heard /var/mail is good and we all know it's good but the dists don't agree. So I ask in front of all of everybody in the hopes that maybe the answer will make sense, what technical reason is there for change now? If you want my opinion as I am SURE everybody does, /var/anything/mail is probably a bad plan from a least privileges standpoint. Qmail users are not the only people out there with ~/Mailbox setups and there are good reasons why, starting with security. The only argument against this I have ever seen is that not all mail users have home directories. While my machine is single-user and this isn't a problem for me, I have seen a few solutions to it. Switching a single one-user system to ~/Mailbox is easy, btw. Switching a single multi-user system to ~/Mailbox is likely to cause a certain amount of pain. Distributing applications to millions of people, some of whom use one convention, and some of whom use another, is surely asking for trouble. And then you have people who use MH or Maildir instead of traditional mbox. The only way to REALLY deal with it sanely is to read $MAIL and see what it says, I suspect. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Way, way off-topic was: Re: Debian logo its license
On Tue, Jan 26, 1999 at 10:33:30AM -0600, John Hasler wrote: You've forgotten something. The military act as if they are above any laws. (If they cared about obeying laws, they would be disarming nuclear weapons under their international treaty obligations) On the contrary. The military, at least in the US and the UK, act in accordance with the laws of their respective nations, which require them to obey the civilian governments. It is those governments, not the military, that are signatories to treaties (not that I know of any that require nuclear disarmament). Just keep telling yourself that.. = -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: DFSG v2 Draft #5
On Mon, Jan 25, 1999 at 01:24:13AM -0800, Darren Benham wrote: On 25-Jan-99 Chris Lawrence wrote: IMHO we should also be discussing how the vote on this proposal will be structured. My understanding is that there are multiple DFSG revision proposals out there, even though this one is the only one being currently hashed out on the list. My voting structure proposal is (using preference voting): [ ] Retain current DFSG [ ] Revised DFSG proposal by A and B [ ] Revised DFSG proposal by C ... [ ] None of the above alternatives is acceptable I envision it as being: [ ] ORIGINAL Draft [ ] Draft w/o patch clause [ ] Draft w/o advertising clause [ ] Draft w/o both clauses [ ] Current DFSG [ ] FURTHER Discussion (required by constitution) Please include URLs, there are SO MANY different proposals we really should give people pointers to exactly which they're voting on. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Fri, Jan 22, 1999 at 03:22:58PM +, M.C. Vernon wrote: As well, my roommate and I were going to also make a character sheet program (hence the reason for making the rolldice stuff a library), so we could just enter the data, and either save it to a file or go ahead and print it out... my roommate has been working on GTK+ for the occasion g Why do I get the idea I should bring up once again my hope to gather a sizable group of people to build a game system which is released under free license and available to anyone with a web browser and the like? = IMHO a RMSS character auto-gen would be a Good Thing(TM). It's a pain in the to do by hand (usually with lots of math errors), and there are plenty of 'doze things around. I'll do the maths if someone will do the UI (and docs :) ) You want a system that takes for-freakin'-ever to roll a character, try Champions. 3 hours or so just to have the char dies in 15 minutes! Oh the pain. = The goal of this system was to define the characters generic enough that you could reasonably build a campaign in any setting really, but not take forever to roll up by hand. I've got some ideas for that, but they're best described in terms of other games really. The big problem with the traditional DD/ADD attributes is that while they account well for basic agility needed in traditional middle ages hack and slash combat, they don't even consider more advanced forms of combat. Even arrow combat in ADD seems to have been an afterthought. I have ideas to deal with that problem, but only ideas so far. Of course the real issue is getting the system different enough from other systems that nobody sues us for it. = TSR would have and I bet WotC would too. These companies are in it for the money, they don't care about the gamers. If they cared about the gamers they would start selling their books wirebound (a common request) because wirebound books last longer under gaming use... -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Fri, Jan 22, 1999 at 04:30:45PM +0100, Federico Di Gregorio wrote: As well, my roommate and I were going to also make a character sheet program (hence the reason for making the rolldice stuff a library), so we could just enter the data, and either save it to a file or go ahead and print it out... my roommate has been working on GTK+ for the occasion g Why do I get the idea I should bring up once again my hope to gather a sizable group of people to build a game system which is released under free license and available to anyone with a web browser and the like? = I am working at that. But I am writing it in italian... too bad my english is very distant from perfection! Will be released under something similar to Artistic. BTW the name is Aedon, and is a generic set'o'rules. When we play (it's about 3 years we use it) we call it Ab Infinito and is a mix between H.P.Lovcraft and the Rork comics by Andreas. I was actually going to something like GPL or LGPL it. I wanted people to be able to make commercial additions to the system as well as free additions, translations, and to be allowed to publish the core system and mods we make freely.. But like the GPL, I don't want them to be able to stop us from making the same stuff available freely. Slightly off topic this one!!! Depends, I was planning on packaging the system's core files and other things for Debian... = -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Fri, Jan 22, 1999 at 03:24:28PM +, M.C. Vernon wrote: Why do I get the idea I should bring up once again my hope to gather a sizable group of people to build a game system which is released under free license and available to anyone with a web browser and the like? = I'm all for it! How about it, anyone else interested? :) aolMe too/aol We could call it gnuice :-) I would have to bop you then... = But it would be under a free software type license, probably GPL or LGPL rewritten so they actually seem to apply to what is essentially going to be documentation and images and the like as opposed to source code to an executable. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Sat, Jan 23, 1999 at 10:23:51AM +, M.C. Vernon wrote: I'm all for it! How about it, anyone else interested? :) aolMe too/aol We could call it gnuice :-) I would have to bop you then... = But it would be under a free software type license, probably GPL or LGPL rewritten so they actually seem to apply to what is essentially going to be documentation and images and the like as opposed to source code to an executable. I guess source code in this context is the \latex source for the rulebook? It would be if I were writing latex.. = I'm not, though. I may use debiandoc maybe, but most likely I'm going to use plain HTML. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 02:31:10PM -0500, Stevie Strickland wrote: Just wondering, what's the output like and does it return for d10 0-9 or 1-10? Does it handle d%? Is the number of dice optional or must one feed it 1d8 for example? Does it return the results of each die or the total rolled or both? Can you give it something like 2d8 d12 3d6 and get a nice formatted output? Am I asking too many questions? = Eek! Let me see if I can answer your questions in order... ; Returns 1-10 (I add 1 to num_sides * (rand() / (RAND_MAX + 1.0)) :) Handles d%? Oh, just put in d100 for right now, but I'll add that in :) Number of dice right now is not optional, but could easily be fixed to default to one... :) Cool = Just total, decided that was the important part (if you ask for 3d6, you're only interested in the result, unless you're doing something like method IV of rolling characters in ADD (I believe), in which you roll 4d6 and take the highest three, in which case do 4x1d6 :) No, only handles the first string, I think... let me try it: midkemia:~$ rolldice 2d8 1d12 3d6 13 In that case, may I suggest output like (goes digging to unbury his dice): $ rolldice 2d8 d12 3d6 2d8: 5 6 (11) d12: 2 3d6: 6 4 2 (12) You could optionally have a line giving a total if more than one set of dice are rolled, in this case something like: Total: 25 Or if you're really crazy, you could allow optional + or - to affect the total, if that were -d12 above the total would be 21 for example.. If it doesn't do EVERYTHING by that point, what more can be said? = Nope, only first string, but I could just have it loop through the non-option arguments, as well :) I'll go away before I scare you off from writing a dice roller, much less anything more important.. = For your final question... no, I'm always glad to answer them, especially since they usually give me things to think about as to new features :) Well I'm sure you have that by now.. = -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 07:37:18PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote: Or if you're really crazy, you could allow optional + or - to affect the total, if that were -d12 above the total would be 21 for example.. If it doesn't do EVERYTHING by that point, what more can be said? = Yes, I think it needs to include a calculator things like 3d6 + 1 and 10d6/d4 work. ;-) Oh how evil! = -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: KDE status?
On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 09:18:50PM +, Jules Bean wrote: Sure no problem. I had no intention of doing so. I was just curious as to the status. There will be no argument from me, especially since I agreed with Debian's stance on the matter. :) Brief summary, then: KDE will not be in slink. KDE will be in potato if a) KDE change their license (in which case it can go into contrib) b) Qt change their license (in which case they may both be able to go into free) b) is the likely outcome, since troll are designing a new Qt license, which Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED]) is looking at with a view to making it both DFSG-free (which it almost certainly will be) and GPL-compatible (trickier). Seems most likely we'll get c. Both of them change licenses and the net result goes into main. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: getting kernel 2.2 into slink
On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 12:34:57PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote: Would anyone object if kernel 2.2 were packaged up at least as a kernel-source package for slink? 2.0.3x would remain slink's default kernel, would be used on the boot disks, etc, but this would let people get ahold of kernel 2.2 easily on a debian cdrom, and it would let us say that debian supports 2.2. (I was at a LUG meeting the other day, and I was asked about this very thing a couple of times; people obviously care about it.) Brian, would this be too grave a violation of your no new code rule? (For those not yet in the know -- kernel 2.2 will probably be released next week.) There is precedent for this as there is a 2.1.125 package in slink now. I think it's not a big deal if there are big disclaimers attached that slink is not a 2.2 targetted dist. -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: getting kernel 2.2 into slink
On Fri, Jan 22, 1999 at 09:25:14AM -0500, Brian White wrote: There is precedent for this as there is a 2.1.125 package in slink now. I think it's not a big deal if there are big disclaimers attached that slink is not a 2.2 targetted dist. Disclamers are of marginal use. It will appear as installable and tell people to install me just as an elevator buttun tells people push me. Adding a disclaimer is like taking a door with a big, pull me handle and putting a push sign above it. The affordance of the handle talks far more loudly than the sign. There is good reason to have new kernels in unstable, but we're talking stable, here. Perhaps the 2.1.125 kernel source should be removed from archs which don't use it then? -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Fri, Jan 22, 1999 at 01:22:32AM -0500, Stevie Strickland wrote: that's the good news. the bad news is that it was all done in turbo pascal. however, the algorithms were clean and readable, so easily ported to C. if you're interested, i'll dig up the files (i still have them on tape somewhere...i think. dusty old code from the early 90s :-) and mail them to you. i'll GPL them first, so you can do what you want with them. Cool! I'd always be glad to look at them (especially since I need a much better parser)... anyway, eventually I want to make a librolldice so that anyone can actually make the front end... and your code could definitely help, because I'm no good at parsers, and that would be one of the most important part of the library... :p I'm not certain why this should be a lib actually, even if you build a bigger program. But hey, if you wanna build a lib, build a lib, we won't complain much.. = As well, my roommate and I were going to also make a character sheet program (hence the reason for making the rolldice stuff a library), so we could just enter the data, and either save it to a file or go ahead and print it out... my roommate has been working on GTK+ for the occasion g Why do I get the idea I should bring up once again my hope to gather a sizable group of people to build a game system which is released under free license and available to anyone with a web browser and the like? = -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: Intent to package rolldice, blackjack
On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 04:04:20AM -0500, Stevie Strickland wrote: rolldice is a virtual dice roller that takes in a string on the command line in the format used by some fantasy role playing games like Advanced Dungeons Dragons[1] and returns the result of the dice rolls. Just wondering, what's the output like and does it return for d10 0-9 or 1-10? Does it handle d%? Is the number of dice optional or must one feed it 1d8 for example? Does it return the results of each die or the total rolled or both? Can you give it something like 2d8 d12 3d6 and get a nice formatted output? Am I asking too many questions? = -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: libpam, cracklib, and slink (was Re: Release-critical...)
On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 06:49:43AM -0500, Johnie Ingram wrote: Thomas How do you know? You waited just 4 hours before drawing that Thomas conclusion. Isn't this a bit early? I mean, not everybody has Thomas an RJ45 jack implanted in one's body. Thankfully enough of us do, including the person who's been NMUing PAM all this time, and some others interested in adopting it. All are on IRC. But if you're going to be wired, I recommend fiber -- its lighter. I'll wait for affordable wireless. ; -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: LSB?
On Tue, Jan 19, 1999 at 05:38:25PM +0100, Vincent Renardias wrote: Reasonable objection notwithstanding, I intend to write a letter to those responsible for the LSB to attempt to raise the issues we have with their current proposal. I would appreciate discussion on these issues in other parts of this thread. If you're interested in the LSB, you should join the LSB mailing list and offer to help. Last I heard the LSB list was closed to the general public, though archives were available. Is this still the case? If the LSB project now welcomes outsiders to work with the project, great. Otherwise I'm concerned doing that would be in vain. writing a letter to those responsible is _very_ likely to be useless considering this lsb-fhs is a very first snapshot and that most problems with it reported on debian-devel have already been reported on the LSB mailing-list. As I've said, last I heard this list was not available to the public. I encourage those who have a significant opinion not yet voiced in the LSB thread found on debian-devel to write them down either as part of the thread or directly to me to aid in the drafting of this letter. Please just don't do that. Whining on debian-devel/Freshmeat/Slashdot will _not_ help. Joining the LSB-test mailing-list and offer to help is a much better thing to do. That's not what I intended to do. I _WAS_ intending to draft a letter based on what we think as a group and send it to -private for peer review and figuring out who does what next. I wouldn't want to publish the letter on -devel as some non-developers would read the draft as a final letter to the LSB people and I want some peer review before anything is read as official from Debian. The reaction to Ian's original dfsg2 proposal (which IMO was right to send to -devel) from those outside Debian who heard only rumors indirectly or read what they wanted into the proposal and went around bashing Debian for adopting this new dfsg indicates to me there is at least some reason for a letter which in the draft stages and is intended to be reviewed by developers first to be handled in this way. To those who went on rumor or read what they wanted into a proposal without reading the attached threads, consider yourselves flamed and read before you comment in the future. =p (this is of course not directed at you personally Vincent..) -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: LSB?
On Tue, Jan 19, 1999 at 02:57:46PM -0500, Dale Scheetz wrote: You can start by writing to our man on point with the LSB, Dale Scheetz. Absolutely! As said elsewhere, I was going to submit the draft to -private. If you think it would be better for you to handle it, say so and I'll stay out of it. I offered because nobody else had and based on opinions found here on -devel and on Debian's irc channels, I felt someone should do something. I'm not trying to work around you or without the opinions of other developers. It is noteworthy, however, that Dale hasn't already commented in this thread. Are you still actively following the LSB, Dale? That only has to do with the fact that I also have billions of other things to do besides reading ill informed postings on this list. I'm sorry if I sound harsh. It is only because I am already overloaded with other people's problems as well as a raft of my own. I can understand that you've had a lot to do. If you wish to educate yourself with /. and not check the facts before spreading fud, then I have no time for you. For information about what the LSB is doing check the web site (www.linuxbase.org), where you will find all of the borring details about how this committee is organized and what is currently going on, or ask me [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I was using just what they had released. Not anything based on Slashdot (which probably has a story on this by now, but I haven't read it..) The test suite under discussion is completely the product of TOG, as a favor to the LSB. I made my objections to the chair of the LSB Committee when TOG first suggested the name of the test suite, but (as usual) my objections were ignored ;-) Figures. = The FHS test suite was suggested, soon after the license was resolved on the POSIX test suite produced by TOG. With the current license, we can pick and choose from the test suites available, those tests that suit the needs of the LSB. So, it really doesn't matter if TOG insists on misnaming the test suite, we can still use it as we please, within the constraints of the Artistic license. Why then did the release info indiciate this was the first version of a LSB compliance test suite but wasn't finished yet so we can't claim based on it that we're compliant? The FUD was not in a Slashdot article, it was on the page which you download the thing from. Essentially, anyone not part of the (AFAIK never opened to the public) LSB mailing list would read this exactly as I did. And in fact that's what they did read, before I even knew there was a release. In addition, there is going to be a physical meeting of the major participants (myself included) soon, so we can get to know each other better, and get a better idea of what we are each going to be able to accomplish. There is also going to be a meeting between us and the various vendors and distributions that have an interest in the outcome of this standard, so that we can come to understand their needs better as well. I believe that Ian J. our fearless leader will be representing Debian at that meeting. So, if I seem to not be johnie on the spot as much as I have in the past, rest assured that I am grinding away on LSB Testing issues, right along with all the other things I grind at ;-) Mostly I am concerned with the information which you regard as FUD being found at the original URLs, not in any story published on Slashdot or whatever. I am glad to see it's not as much a worry as I originally thought and (as Vincent suggested) I am interested in helping however I can. I didn't mean to step on your toes and I am sorry if my message indicated that was my intent. Based on the information I had, the release info for this test suite, I saw the same problems other people were seeing and felt it necessary to start to get the ball rolling to avert disaster with the LSB. The following is directed at Joseph: If you insist on associating the deficiencies in one thing with the capabilities of another, I'm surprised your life isn't total chaos. Such reasoning is totally without logic, and you would be better off rolling dice to decide your next move. I strongly suggest you do better research, next time you think you should badmouth someone else's work. There are some very quality folks working on the LSB, and you denigrate their efforts when you draw the unsubstantiated conclusions you presented above. I consider this unfair at the very least. Before the LSB project was created there was an irc meeting which was held somewhat in secret, though I heard about it. I attended about half of that meeting based on what I know and there I offered to help. My offer was rejected then. I tried to follow the project afterward, but information was kept internal and the only way I could follow anything was by reading public archives of a private list, which I wasn't even aware of until such time as things started happening which lead
Re: France and Cryptography
On Tue, Jan 19, 1999 at 08:02:34PM +0100, Samuel Tardieu wrote: FYI, the French Prime Minister just announced that cryptography will become legal in France! In the meantime (until our representatives adopt the law), the authorized key sizes go from 40 bits to 128 bits. Now if the idiot in the White House would get a clue and lose the crypto regs in the US -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: LSB?
It has come to my attention that recent decisions made by the Linux Standard Base body (I hesitate to say committee as I have never been party to any of their internal discussions and am unaware of their internal organizational structrure) are possibly unwise and have been determined by at least a few individuals as A Bad Thing. Particularly worth note are several i386isms and other things which those who have spoken already feel are oversights with potentially disasterous results. Reasonable objection notwithstanding, I intend to write a letter to those responsible for the LSB to attempt to raise the issues we have with their current proposal. I would appreciate discussion on these issues in other parts of this thread. I encourage those who have a significant opinion not yet voiced in the LSB thread found on debian-devel to write them down either as part of the thread or directly to me to aid in the drafting of this letter. For those who missed the thread on -devel, relevant URLs can be found at http://ct.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/news/1999/01/18/916679929.html -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: LSB?
It has come to my attention that recent decisions made by the Linux Standard Base body (I hesitate to say committee as I have never been party to any of their internal discussions and am unaware of their internal organizational structrure) are possibly unwise and have been determined by at least a few individuals as A Bad Thing. Particularly worth note are several i386isms and other things which those who have spoken already feel are oversights with potentially disasterous results. Reasonable objection notwithstanding, I intend to write a letter to those responsible for the LSB to attempt to raise the issues we have with their current proposal. I would appreciate discussion on these issues in other parts of this thread. I encourage those who have a significant opinion not yet voiced in the LSB thread found on debian-devel to write them down either as part of the thread or directly to me to aid in the drafting of this letter. For those who missed the thread on -devel, relevant URLs can be found at http://ct.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/news/1999/01/18/916679929.html -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Re: what about Pine's license?
On Mon, Jan 18, 1999 at 03:05:54AM -0700, Bruce Sass wrote: Go on, please. It's non-free - you can't distribute modified binaries. That is where Debian placed the Pine source - who says so? 'nuff said No. Yes. Permission not given in a license is DENIED. When UW was asked about this, they indicated that binaries should either be built from pristine source or patches must be accepted by them or they don't want you distributing binaries and they would not change this practice. Requiring such evil things as gaining permission to distribute a modified binary makes the software non-free. In fact, Debian can't even offer a non-free package. It must offer only source, as is required with qmail. Trust me, pine is in non-free for a reason. If you don't like that reason I suggest you take it up with UW since they're the only one who can even begin to change anything. = -- I'm working in the dark here. Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark. -- Earth: Final Conflict
Nomination
[ Please send replies to -devel, Cc's to me encouraged ] When I originally stated my interest in running for Debian project leader, I was unsure if I really would be a good candidate or not, so I offered to run if others believed I should. I am confident that I can be a good leader for Debian, and I'm pleased that others who have commented seem to agree. With this message I announce my intention to run for Debian project leader. The obvious requirement for the job is time for the project and lots of it at that. But I also believe the project leader should take an active role in leading the project, but not to the point that they start pushing instead of leading. The ability to listen to people you don't agree with is also very important, as is the ability to say what you're trying to say clearly. I believe I have these qualities. I think it's important that those who are planning to support me in this election be aware of my position on a few issues. One of the most prominent issues I see affecting the project right now is IWJ's proposal to rewrite the DFSG. I am opposed to this and believe we should focus on correcting the problems with the current DFSG rather than trying to totally replace it. I also am opposed to some of the changes made in Ian's proposal, namely placing a time limit on use of the BSD Advertising clause and disallowing licenses which require modifications to source code be made as patches. I can agree that both of these things are not desirable even if they are at the moment allowed by the DFSG. I can agree that we might make it known in a revision of the DFSG that both of these are depreciated because they are difficult to work with, but removing them outright seems like a bad plan to me, as does applying a time limit to their acceptance or grandfathering well-known applications or licenses. As for the future, there are a number of things I can envision. The short of it is that Debian is currently working towards these things now. These include unattended and multiple machine installations, a better package front-end, smoother installation on more hardware, that sort of thing. I support making things user friendly, but I think other distributions are making a few mistakes I hope Debian does not make. Under some distributions, there are really nice and pretty high-level configuration tools which automate tasks, but many of them don't work unless you stick with the standard configuration. Debian's tools seem to have this problem much less often, but as a consequence they are more mid-level tools and require more reading on the part of a new Linux user. I believe this is the Right Way to do things, and many of you agree with me. However I also support high-level tools which work with these mid-level tools. Often times this makes the high-level tools easier to write, and when that isn't the case, the added difficulty in writing the tool is rewarded with seamless integration with the current system. This is good. An example of a high-level tool which could be designed to work with an existing mid-level tool might be a configuration utility for sendmail. Instead of trying to build sendmail.cf, it would build sendmail.mc which is much easier for a number of reasons. Just about everything that can be done with sendmail.cf and be done with sendmail.mc, the program could read the mc file which would mean that changes made manually would not be lost, and all around everything is more smooth. I realize we have kicked the idea of release goals in favor of project goals, but I believe it is important that we prioritize our goals together and figure out what we want to do in the short term. Some goals I think we can accomplish with potato are 2.2.x kernel, glibc2.1, a better package front-end, and more streamlining of the installation. I think PAM is possible too, but this largely depends on coordination of effort. I believe we should start moving in the direction of FHS compliance too, we'll see how that pans out. Of course we shouldn't limit ourselves to these things. If something else comes up that can be done, I believe it would be foolish not to do it because we decided beforehand to focus on something else. Certainly we shouldn't hold up a release for changes like the above unless of course something really requires it. The best we can do is work around them. Another issue that has come up a few times is restructuring of the archives in one manner or another. I am not sure everyone suggesting it realizes what a big job this would be. I can see that some changes are beneficial, but I think I would object to a gratuitous change. If the change is needed, we should discuss it and make the changes we need to make. However change for the sake of change will only frustrate users and developers alike. I know some (read: most) of you are worried about bureaucracy creeping into Debian. I'm as concerned about this as many of you are and I hope that we can
Re: Is rvplayer working for others?
On Sun, Oct 18, 1998 at 09:03:34PM +, Rob Browning wrote: On the rvplayer side, nobody there seems to want to talk about it... *sigh* Always nice to have such clear reminders of the importance of free software... And people ask why we push for mp3 in places that patents on software are illegal and continue to use mp3 players all we like... After seeing this situation, they ask? Here's your answer. Show me code or get out of my way. pgpui7pBYbpEP.pgp Description: PGP signature
nextish gtk and similar (Was: syntax highlighting in gtk)
Are there any plans to package things like the nextish GTK patches or anything like that? From freshmeat: subject: GTKstep 1.1.2 added by: Ullrich Hafner [EMAIL PROTECTED] time: 15:08 category: Software GTKstep is a patch to improve the boring GTK+ look and feel with a NEXTSTEP(tm) look and feel. There are patches available for GTK+ 1.0.x and 1.1.x. o Download (ftp://sunshine.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/pub/wmaker/gtkstep/) o Homepage (http://www-info2.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/mitarbeiter/ulli/gtkstep/) o Appindex Record (http://appindex.freshmeat.net/view/907673219/) Seems like all the wmaker users and afterstep/asclassic users (me) would probably feel much happier with something that didn't look so ugly and out of place on our systems. = I'd offer to package it, but I honestly don't know how would be the right way to do that kind of a package. I'm not unwilling to try it though if someone wouldn't mind offering to help keep me from making a HUGE mess out of it and if I'm not the only person who would use the things.. pgpY1TE5mnf5y.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: what is non-free in this license?
On Fri, Oct 16, 1998 at 03:47:16PM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote: THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THIS PROGRAM - whatsoever. You use it entirely [..] What I hi-lighted I do believe violates the DFSG.. Zephaniah E, Hull. Huh? Where do the DFSG say this? See http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Go into Emacs and type C-h C-w That had been highlighted by the original author... = pgpUkqxVZhK2c.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: moving mutt-i from non-us to main
On Sat, Oct 17, 1998 at 09:55:48PM +0200, Bart Schuller wrote: People, The fact that there even exist two debian versions of mutt should tell you that it was an issue for people. Looking through the changelogs, I see that mutt was moved to non-US in Feb. 1997: mutt (0.61.1-1) unstable; urgency=low * New upstream release. * Now non-US. (Bug #7257) -- J.H.M. Dassen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue, 11 Feb 1997 14:15:27 +0100 Has anything changed since then, or do we have a too short collective memory? The bug was filed probably because it seemed likely that it was the easiest and safest course. Some of us in the world (or at least in the US) believe we should have taken a stand long ago. There is no crypto hook in mutt that does not exist in bash or worse, in perl which can also read PGP key files just like mutt can. Are they non-us too? pgp6Sz5QLgeHH.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: moving mutt-i from non-us to main
On Thu, Oct 15, 1998 at 06:02:28PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was under the impression that putting hooks in to use crypto was enough to raise the hackles of the export hounds. Standing near the border and thinking about prime numbers is enough to raise the hackles of the export kooks. Ihere has got to be some limit to the amount of crap we'll take from these jerks. Ignore the nonsense about 'hooks' and ship it. applause pgpA3Ib8PDnrD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: gdselect alpha 3
On Fri, Oct 16, 1998 at 09:48:18AM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote: What I need from dselect is more screen space, more pixels, a less crampled selection environment. It takes forver to navigate through dselect because of the sheer number of packages. It seems that gdselect would help a lot in this respect (I use 1600x1200 on X). I run 640x480 or 800x600 depending. I want gdselect ported back to console. = pgpZL1q31i2og.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Which PGP?
On Thu, Oct 15, 1998 at 03:08:46PM +0100, Dave Swegen wrote: Out of curiosity, which version of PGP is the debian de facto standard. I'm currently using v5, but I've seen a number of people use 2.6... The Debian standard is RSA/IDEA (2.6.x compatible) keys, though Debian is slowly adjusting to include gpg (5.x compatible plus more and it's free, with the ability to add RSA and IDEA as modules if you don't mind that they're non-free due to patent BS) pgpxCbYg0qcBE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Which PGP?
On Thu, Oct 15, 1998 at 08:23:38PM +0100, James Troup wrote: Dave Swegen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Out of curiosity, which version of PGP is the debian de facto standard. I'm currently using v5, but I've seen a number of people use 2.6... 2.x; we don't accept later stuff. Dpkg now does support gpg though not by default (you might have still been away at the time this came up) and it was planned to modify dinstall to support both. Did the dinstall mod not happen or something? pgpNP8XWkksMS.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: moving mutt-i from non-us to main
On Thu, Oct 15, 1998 at 02:14:20PM -0700, Marc Singer wrote: Can I move mutt-i from non-us to main? There is no crypto code in the package, only SHA-1 (hash algorithm) and code to run pgp or gnupg. (Waiting to resolve this issue I haven't uploaded yet the stripped version to main, I hope Brian will let it slip past the freeze, there are no other differences from the complete version.) I was under the impression that putting hooks in to use crypto was enough to raise the hackles of the export hounds. Well geez, time to move bash to non-free, it has built-in hooks to run crypto. mutt-i can also grok pgp keyrings for key selection and the like. It probably does the same with gpg keyrings (old format I imagine, not sure if the new format is yet supported) though that's not illegal either. pgpfl3Okdofy3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: what's after slink
On Thu, Oct 15, 1998 at 03:29:34PM -0700, Joey Hess wrote: theone wrote: Names after Slink is very simple. They should just be named after userfriendly characters. Oooh.. that means our releases would even have their own geek code blocks (http://www.userfriendly.org/cast/) ;-) dust_puppy pitr aj chief cobb erwin greg hillary mike smiling_man stef tanya miranda now too... Don't forget her. (I still want an iWhack) pgpCXtVXA2Jpm.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [larsbj@ifi.uio.no: Re: copyright problem]
On Mon, Oct 12, 1998 at 12:25:12PM +0200, Gergely Madarasz wrote: [...] I agree that by using XForms in development, and XForms *is* needed to compile and run LyX, we have implicitly allowd all users to link Lyx with XForms. [...] I don't think so. It is not enough for KDE, why should it be enough for LyX ? It's not enough for KDE because KDE includes things not written by the KDE people. How can we be sure that LyX does not include things not written by them? And anyway we're not given permission to distribute it. The intent was there, if clarification is asked for it'll be given. There's no need to be unnecessarily harsh on them because lyx uses xforms. The intent is and always was to use xforms. The klyx package was merely a port from one non-free lib to another and those who complained have in general been more concerned with the forking and duplicated effort than the non-free qt in use. This can all be resolved reasonably if people stay reasonable. (Please note I use none of the software mentioned herein, so this is only an issue for me as it relates to Debian..) pgpW6jRcBOhVD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [ettrich@troll.no: Re: copyright problem]
On Mon, Oct 12, 1998 at 11:58:16AM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote: How about this one? I told him I would remove the first sentence but other than that it looks okay to me. Michael - Forwarded message from Matthias Ettrich [EMAIL PROTECTED] - If we do something like this, I'd rather suggest a text like: The GPL is often a source of missunderstanding and confusion. As we understand the license, redistribution and use of LyX in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted without any additional conditions. Even more, we would explicitely like to encourage people to distribute LyX in both source and binary forms. This permission certainly includes linking against GUI toolkits like XForms, Motif, GTK, Qt or Win32. If that is still ok for Debian, I could live with it. Michael? If that isn't good enough for anyone, they really need to consider why they think it's not. You can't get much better than that, with or without the first sentance. I have to ask though, why anyone in their right friggin mind would want to port something as useful (to others, I have no need for it myself) as lyx to something as UGLY as Motif chuckle pgpr8GpIHCOqy.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [ettrich@troll.no: Re: copyright problem]
On Mon, Oct 12, 1998 at 01:44:18PM -0300, Nicolás Lichtmaier wrote: people to distribute LyX in both source and binary forms. This permission certainly includes linking against GUI toolkits like XForms, Motif, GTK, Qt or Win32. `... and distributing the resulting binary.' should be added. You can always link in the privacy of your home. What GPL forbids is to distribute the `derived work'. I think probably that would fall under the classification of nitpicking personally. Very few would misunderstand the intention I think. pgpxjk3sXq36A.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Intend to package, create OSS/Free
On Mon, Oct 12, 1998 at 06:56:22PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why are the sound modules not included with the kernel? Afaik they are in Redhat. They are. The intent is to package binaries for the standard kernels already made... pgpltzRfWWC4i.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LyX KDE
On Mon, Oct 12, 1998 at 04:38:45PM +0100, mummert[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I might be able to get a similar license agreement for KDE as the one I send for LyX. Would that be enough to get at least major parts of KDE back on the site? I have no idea how much we would have to keep out. I know kghostview and kdvi, but other than that? Since I use Gnome I cannot simply check. No KDE on my machine. :-) The similar license for KDE is an important step, however it is not a final step as there are 7 packages which need to have permission aquired ... I sent you a Cc of an email with that and at least a beginning point for contact people. Nice work with the lyx license BTW. The packages are kfloppy, kmidi, kvt, kscd, kghostview, kdvi, and kreversi which the GPL license was something the KDE people caused. pgpTCmt299Dme.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Linux next ?
On Tue, Oct 13, 1998 at 09:51:11AM -0700, Kenneth Scharf wrote: As long as such software came with the hardware, I can see no difference between that, and buying a copy of Wordperfect for Linux. We already have commerical X servers and sound drivers available which are NOT licensed under the GPL. You don't HAVE to buy these, unless you feel that they are what you need, and worth the price. ...and in the case of sound drivers, nobody has told you about ALSA. pgps9TWQJHj1H.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Packages that disappeared
On Tue, Oct 13, 1998 at 07:58:58AM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote: x11amp-static mp3.8hz You didn't watch the 100 messages thread on debian-private? I never got it. In fact I was surprised I didn't get a single mail on private for at least two months. Could anyone please check whether I'm still listed there? Also would you care to summarize? x11ampg at least we have no license to distribute (at all), the package was also in contrib rather than non-free. We couldn't contact the author. Hopefully at some point that can be resolved, but there was no license at all distributed with the package. I'm guessing x11amp-static would have been an older version or something like that. mp3.8hz had a nice letter from the owners of a few patents demanding they start paying a license fee per copy of 8hz-mp3 distributed. They wanted essentially $25(didn't give indication, but I'd assume US) per copy with a minimum yearly payment of $100,000 or something like that. 8hz decided to panic rather than fight back considering that software patents are iLLEGAL where 8hz was being developed, and when Debian developers contacted them they said that it would be best if we didn't distribute it for our own sakes anymore. German corporations are as bloodthirsty as American ones are. I had my copy of 8hz before this all came up. And I'm not going to get rid of it--they did say distribute didn't they? pgpP7qSc84oTL.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: intent to remove libglide from non-free
On Sun, Oct 11, 1998 at 01:48:43PM -0700, Chris Waters wrote: Any reason, aside from the lack of volunteers, why we can't do what we do with netscape/staroffice/etc.? Even if we can't distribute it, can't we have a loader package? (No, I'm not volunteering, I don't own a 3dfx card either.) Someone wanna send me a 3dfx? I'll make an installer if I have one so I can get the packages legally.. = pgp2jDiaV8b4B.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [larsbj@ifi.uio.no: Re: copyright problem]
On Sun, Oct 11, 1998 at 10:52:19PM +0200, Gergely Madarasz wrote: [...] I agree that by using XForms in development, and XForms *is* needed to compile and run LyX, we have implicitly allowd all users to link Lyx with XForms. [...] I don't think so. It is not enough for KDE, why should it be enough for LyX ? It's not enough for KDE because KDE includes things not written by the KDE people. pgpcyhQQtMrHq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 09:16:01PM -0400, Shaya Potter wrote: There are those possibilities, but the lyx people will probably give permission for linking with libforms since they clearly intend for that to be done. The biggest problem with KDE was outside code that was ported and that the KDE people did not want to make the needed changes. Has anyone yet contacted the lyx people? I wonder why you are so sure of that, the originall author of Lyx was Mathias Ehtrich, who also happens to be the head of KDE. Because Mathias has more or less forked klyx off the orignial lyx project and the remaining people probably aren't going to complain too much. It's not impossible for them to pretty much take a vote on it and opt to do the right thing. They may not, however. We'll see. It all depends really on who wrote what I suppose. pgpgY6fv8hXrl.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 08:51:29PM -0400, Shaya Potter wrote: Lyx is currently in contrib. Lyx is licensed under the GPL (version 2) . It is dynamically linked against a non-free library (libforms) . According to the GPL and our interpretation of it in the KDE statement, this means we should not be distributing (binaries at least) of Lyx. For instance, these binaries use .h files from libforms. Unlike KDE, it may be all original code, so that a single change of license from the developers will do. Boy, Mathias Ehtrich is going to think we have something against him. :) He's going to think that anyway. Do we not do the right thing just because one person is going to think it's personal? pgpxkgq1oikcm.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: intent to remove libglide from non-free
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 04:48:44PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If nobody wants to take up this torch I'm going to suggest the existing package be dropped from the distribution. If anybody _does_ want to try to deal with this, please let me know. New license: ... ... This proprietary commercial software and if it is on any Debian servers it must be removed *immediately*. No waiting to see if they might change the license. It must be removed *now*. But the old license on the old packages allowed us to distribute .deb's ... pgpekbHIyJW9U.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [ettrich@troll.no: Live and let live]
On Sun, Oct 11, 1998 at 01:33:15AM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: If I ever thought Matthias needed to be bludgeoned severely with a cluebat, it's now. I have little respect left for him. Fortunately, a few of the non-core KDE developers show more promise. Hopefully a few of them will continue to try and make sense out of what is otherwise a good project, with a bad license problem. Agreed. However, this was not an official statement. I wonder if KDE had made *any* official statement in the past. They have yet to answer us officially. Don't expect one either. If they can't get together to answer our stance officially, I'd be oligued to assume they agree. This is how things work (if you write to the pope, and he or his priests don't answer single points, the single points are correct). Their unofficial responses seem clear: They are intentionally ignorant of the GPL's restrictions so they can have it both ways. The fact that everyone else says they can't doesn't matter to them. Whomever said the theatre is burning and people are screaming FIRE! while they respond Shut up, we're trying to watch the movie! had it right on. pgpNA690teLMi.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [ettrich@troll.no: Live and let live]
On Sun, Oct 11, 1998 at 12:18:19PM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote: In case some Debian developers read this mailing list: Guys, you don't like KDE since it encourages people to write software for it. Therefore you don't want What does this mean exactly? Why would we be unhappy with KDE because people are encouraged to write for it? This doesn't make one bit of sense. Order me an extra big cluebat, Joseph. ONE cluebat, extra large, coming up! pgpAvvrMAwDCG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 10:43:00PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: Because Mathias has more or less forked klyx off the orignial lyx project and the remaining people probably aren't going to complain too much. It's not impossible for them to pretty much take a vote on it and opt to do the right thing. They may not, however. We'll see. It all depends really on who wrote what I suppose. Hmm.. did they agree ahead of time that the license could be changed with a vote? If Mathias is a significant author, and he disagrees with the license change, he has a right to object. Granted he does.. However, he's going to look like a complete ass if everyone but him wants to do the right thing and he won't. pgpoECkSUgiuT.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 12:46:11PM -0700, Geoffrey L. Brimhall wrote: I find this interesting because there is quite a bit of various efforts to port GPL'd code and programs to the MS Windows environments. Legally, this would imply stepping very carefully because who knows what proprietary libraries might be linked to get the port to work. Am I correct in this statement ? There are exceptions for things that are included was part of the OS (ie, you can link against common dialog, common control, etc on windoze--but not on Linux where those things wouldn't be system libraries) That's a little unclear I know, but the GPL does spell out a special exception to make that possible. It's kosher to link Motif on Solaris, for example but not Linux since Solaris always includes Motif, but Linux does not. pgpquGsWrojvp.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Sun, Oct 11, 1998 at 12:25:27PM -0700, Alex wrote: [..] And lots of people haven't kicked stuff back. Why doesn't *BSD run on an SGI Indy - its because the BSD license didnt force all the neat stuff to be contributed back. And there are thousands of other examples like it. I fail to see how this is all that much different from the GPL perhaps scaring off a comercial entity from contributing code. Of course I don't have a specific example off the top of my head :) The GPL has a feature that with the exception of essential system type libraries (which is IMO far too vague to be terribly useful) any work derived from the GPL must also be under the terms of the GPL. Not necessarily GPL, but the same terms. The other stuff can allow more (LGPL for example) but not less (Motif for example). Of course, Motif was a really hairy example because some places like Solaris, Motif is considered a system library! So you can use Motif some places and not others with GPL code? Essentially yeah. The GPL feature that all derived works must be pure is quite frustrating and only the GPL has that feature. What happens when GPL code is written for use with something not under those terms then? Much of KDE is written from scratch, after all---as is lyx and a few (dozen) other programs I could probably think of with some time. According to the letter of the GPL, when combined with these things the software is undistributable. Certainly that's not what the authors want, so it's been generally assumed that they did want you to distribute things linked together like that or they wouldn't do it themselves. It seems that because of the way things are working out, that's not going to be enough anymore. = It wasn't really enough before, but now clearly it's not. Of course, it's Debian's position that just because that permission is implied with things like lyx for example, things that were otherwise free like ghostview don't have that implied permission. That's the biggest reason I was part of the consensus that said we needed KDE to clarify the license or we couldn't distribute it after the license issue was reported as a bug. Stephan Kulow was going to bring it up with everyone else and try and get some resolution out of it. No resolution happened. So months later, we decided that we had probably no other choice than to remove it until the license was at least addressed. Well you can see where that's gone. It's made a BIGGER mess of everything and it's no closer to getting the right things done like asking the ghostview people if it's okay to use their GPL code with Qt. FWIW, I'm not certain still if that feature in the GPL is good or not. It was put there with good intentions, but it's clear there's a reason the GPL is the only license that requires these hoops be jumped through. Your the world outside of GPL is evil attitude is quite bogus. I don't know where you got that from. But its not my attitude. I get that feeling from this whole thread, but perhaps that's just me. The whole thread is proof what a mess this whole thing is. I'm glad at least Stephan will continue to make debian packages, but that's not the way I wanted this to end. Most of Debian does not believe KDE is inherently evil (though I won't lie to you and claim that I don't believe at this point that a few of the KDE developers simply don't WANT any resolution) though I'll admit a few of the Debian users and at least one or two developers have had nothing but nasty things to say about KDE itself. I probably would have given up on the whole KDE project if I didn't believe that at least a few developers (more than a couple of which have contacted me by email in response to my slashdot postings) are at least concerned by this. As far as I am concerned, the majority of KDE which is written by KDE completely has no problem--you'd not have written it for Qt if you didn't intend it to be used with Qt. (duh, how did I ever arrive at that conclusion? Those who haven't make me wonder...) But the included parts of other GPL applications, that's more an issue. I know nobody really wants to go around asking everyone hey, you mind if we use your code with Qt? especially when in a majority of cases the answer is going to probably be I don't give a rip as long as my name stays on it. I have offered before (many times now) and offer still to help if my help is at all desired. Course Harmony would fix the whole problem without asking anyone for anything, but I don't see that has happening real soon. pgpIAmz4IFk35.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [comp.os.linux.announce] COMMERCIAL: Debian User's Guide Second Edition $38.95
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 05:16:37PM -0400, Johnie Ingram wrote: Ben Just wondering, Dale, but why didn't you announce this to the Ben Debian lists as well as the c.o.linux.announce? Because this is a commercial, and there is a $1000 charge to advertise on debian lists (to discourage spam). Anyone collected from the spammers we've had yet? (World Record Sex and all?) pgpKVKKqbuJ16.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: X window logo
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 03:54:01PM -0400, Branden Robinson wrote: Whenever you start a program running under X11, the windows created usually have the little 'X' logo in the upper left hand corner. If you are running RedHat linux however, the upper left hand corner of the windows contains the RedHat logo (head with a red hat). Why can't it (under Debian) have the blue eyed penguin logo? Just because Red Hat sees the need to urinate all over everything with their logo doesn't mean we should. Nevertheless, this kind of thing is easily configurable with the window manager, so if you want to do it for your own machine(s), there's nothing to stop you. Most Debian users are like most Redhat users: They won't care if the logo is there or they'll be proud to have it. If neither of those is the case, they'll change the damned logo, no problem. = pgpcSLYkeoioa.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: yagirc bugs - new maintainer or not?
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 12:33:07PM -0700, David Welton wrote: I'm here, working on 0.66 as we speak. This might be a good time to ask a question. yagirc can now be built with gnome interface or text interface. Should I make two packages, include both in one package or just drop the non-gui? IIRC, the non-gui one is more a proof of concept, and, at least for now, I think that most users of yagirc are interested in the GUI. Non-gui people are most likely using epic, or something similiar:- Well, they are assuming I can convince hop to make a release that fixes the 4pre2 bugs and he'll let me package. = 4pre2 is actually pretty stable, but there are a few small bugs still. Most of them do not affect me directly, but rather seem to affect other people. =p pgpPnIYnceT5T.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Slashdot on the KDE stance
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 11:40:04AM -0700, David Welton wrote: Slashdot has posted an article about the decision to remove the KDE binaries right now. Could someone please post the article or at least the complete URL? http://slashdot.org - it's a pretty good source of Linux news. The comments have degraded though, don't bother with them.. Used to be people like Alan Cox occasionally posted.. no more (afaik). MOST of the comments on the Debian/KDE mess are actually pretty good. There are idiots in the mix, of course, but far fewer than usual. Um, since the original request quoted above asked for a URL... http://slashdot.org/features/98/10/08/1520242.shtml pgpZNRONL73JB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 06:36:12PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: the last sentence, from However, as a special exception is particularly relevant here. So, if Qt were disttributed with the OS then it would fall under the special exception? :) Some people argue that it would. RMS argues that to wouldn't in the case of Linux at least, however none of that matters since Debian does not and will not ever make Qt part of Debian. Personally, I would just like the KDE people to admit that at least in some cases, linking with Qt isn't going to work with the GPL. Some of the core developers and all of the Troll Tech people refuse to do this because they don't want to deal with asking for permission. Or rather, they refuse to admit they need to. Even if some sign was handed down from some divine power saying that KDE needed an exception to link with Qt, they would not admit it even then. Truth is, both Redhat and Debian say that KDE does need permission. Redhat won't distribute Qt because they don't like it. Debian won't distribute Qt because it's non-free. At least on both Redhat and Debian, according to Slashdot the two biggest distributions, won't include Qt as a standard part of their distributions. On those distributions, Qt is not a system library. It could be argued that it's not on SuSE or Caldera either, but I'm not going to touch that argument now since the point is that at least SOMEWHERE, KDE linked with Qt can't be distributed. Now, I won't install Qt even for the parts of KDE I like. (I don't like KDE as a whole integrated answer to life, the universe, and unix GUIs) If Troll Tech does something like make Qt compatible with the stock GPL when linked with the stock GPL, I'll consider it. However, they are under no obligation to do so, and I'm not one of those who advocate forcing them to give away Qt. If harmony ever manages to see the light of day and KDE does not intentionally break KDE with harmony any time there's a good excuse to do so, I'll probably use those parts of KDE I like with harmony. This is a long way off I suspect. If I could code worth a damn, I'd be helping harmony rather than writing these silly emails. Instead, I'd rather see KDE available to anyone who wants to use it, including Debian users. I've offered several times to help KDE get the permission it needs to link Qt on slashdot and a couple more times on irc. If KDE is willing to try and fix the problem, I'm willing to help them even if I won't use the results myself. Why would I do this? Because KDE is too big a project, too useful to too many people, and all around too important to be killed because of uncertainties in licenses and people's stubbornness. So far, none of the core KDE developers has been willing to admit there is even any controversy to the whole KDE/Qt thing with the exception of Stephan Kulow. Ignoring the controversy won't make it go away. It won't make KDE any better. It won't make KDE any more popular. In fact, it makes more people reject the whole KDE project because it seems pretty clear that the only thing we're hearing from any of the core developers is that there is no problem and if there is we're imagining it. I know that if any code of mine were ported to KDE without my permission, I would be extremely pissed off about it. Whether I'd give permission or not, not asking would anger me quite a bit. What's wrong with This software is Free Software and may be used according to the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or, at your option, any later version. Additionally, you may link this software with the Qt widget library written by Troll Tech AS, even for platforms on which use of the Qt library would normally be prohibited. That solves any question of whether or not you can link Qt. Of course, you'll still have to get permission for GPL programs which are ported to KDE, but I've already offered to help with that myself. pgpYGiqnRjjEW.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 04:56:23AM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: Let me try to make some qualified guess about this: If KDE would add the permission note, they would admit that there is a license problem, and they had to stop sucking in GPL'ed third party code without explicit permission by the authors. They'd have to admit that there is at least a possible situation in which a binary of a GPL program linked with the Qt library might undistributable under the terms of the GPL. Which is true---in at least some cases, there is a problem. Debian and Redhat are two such cases. Seems that KDE has either an attitude problem or they are scared that there wouldn't be too much support for them if they had to ask for permission to link with a non-free library each time they incorporate foreign code. The FSF at least, would deny such permission for certain. Most people who just released their code under the GPL because it's cool to GPL your code probably would not object to that exception however. The point being that it still needs to be asked for. If KDE is unwilling, all I can say is I hope harmony is usable soon, before a few of the core developers who want to be anal about it and pretend there is no problem at all kill their own project. To all of those who would simply say KDE sucks, just use Gnome, I say if I wanted someone else to tell me what I should or shouldn't use, I'd run windoze. The fact that I choose not to use Qt has no bearing on my right to choose it if I wanted to. However, I wouldn't pretend that there is no problem at all with using the GPL and Qt together. KDE has known about this problem for some time now. That they haven't even tried to address it saddens me a great deal. pgpiW38nastQu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 05:14:19AM +0200, Martin Konold wrote: On 10 Oct 1998, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote: All this is just splitting hairs, though. The real question is what is KDE's problem with just adding that additional permission to their license? How does it hurt them to do that? Is that really not obvious to you? Craig Sanders and some debian people wanted to play simple tricks ;-) No tricks, we see what we believe to be serious issues. We'd like those issues resolved. More than a few of us have nothing against KDE (I won't say none of us do because that would be a lie) but we still recognize the need to deal with what to us seems like a messy issue. The only way Debian could deal with it is by removing KDE from Debian. A few are not sad to see it go, a few are, and a good number figure that it doesn't matter since Debian packages are available elsewhere. I think it's too bad it had to be removed personally. I'd like to see it returned to the contrib section for now, and I'd even more like to see it in main. Contrib won't happen till the license problem is hashed out, even those who didn't want to see KDE go agreed that it had to because of those issues. Main won't happen as long as KDE depends on non-free software (Qt). KDE has said they wouldn't use a Qt replacement if it were given to them, already functional. We take this to mean KDE has no intention to remove the dependancy on Qt which is clearly non-free according the the DFSG. That KDE has known about the license problem for some time and does nothing had to finally be taken as KDE has no desire to try and fix the problem and in fact refuses to admit the problem is there because of what it would mean to them. It's really a shame KDE chose the GPL. Many BSD people will tell you the GPL is the most restrictive free software license there is. It's the only widely used free license that prohibits use with a library like Qt under any circumstances at all. No special exception for system libraries, but rather the code is free and use it how you want. pgp5EFT9k8HNN.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 12:35:31PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote: non-free license. Neither I, nor anyone sensible, has any argument with TT's license...it's their software, they can do what they like with it.) That doesn't mean everyone else ise sensible. I've seen many people DEMAND Troll Tech release Qt under the GPL. I wanted to take a large cluebat to their heads for the reasons you cite above. pgpo9WU5R5bIr.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 05:17:55AM +0200, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote: Sorry, I must be too tired. I misread a paragraph of yours, so some of my previous message probably don't make much sense. You say that linking constitutes making a derived works of the object files and libraries being linked together. Does that mean that you think Debian should convert libc and so on from the LGPL to the GPL in order to comply with the license of the GPL'd applications in main? Not at all, LGPL code is considered to be GPL'd when linked with other GPL code. However, X licensed code can also be linked with GPL'd code because its terms are more flexable than the GPL terms, so meeting the GPL's requirements is not an issue. The GPL is pretty much compatible with all the major Free Software licenses (Qt is not Free Software, nor do I argue that Troll Tech has any obligation to make it so) however it is the only Free Software license that is so totally incompatible with non-free software licenses. (By definitions of Free, I am using the DFSG) Other examples of Free licenses include BSD, Artistic (a personal favorite), X, LGPL, etc. From the FSF perspective, the GPL is more free' because it keeps software more pure. From the BSD camp, the BSD, X, and similar licenses are more free because they don't have the GPL's restrictions to keep them pure and you can literally use BSD/X license code in any way you want and with anything else you want. Of course, nobody says you can't license the code as GPL, but you can also ... In fact, that's one of the things that would put KDE back in Debian. Of course, you'd have to ask for example the people who wrote ghostview for permission to do the same with their code, but I have already offered to help with trying to get such permission of KDE wishes to make an effort to resolve this mess. Harmony would solve the whole damned problem, but it's hardly usable now for ANY purpose AFAICT, and I don't see that changing in the near future. = pgpgCgEQLiOqm.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 08:56:30PM -0700, Ben Gertzfield wrote: Martin Will Debian remove LyX from their ftp server? According to Martin several Debian developers Xforms is not a DFSG compatible Martin library. This is a harder one. :) xforms is in the non-free distribution of Debian, which technically makes it not part of the operating system. I'm not sure how that interacts with the GPL. Badly, as a matter of fact. This issue is being resolved with the lyx people and will probably result in GPL-but-you-can-also-link-xforms. The problem is not specific to KDE, nor do we pretend it is. However, so far only KDE has generally ignored us when we have tried to ask them about the license problems. Many of us took a wait-and-let-them-deal-with-it approach with all of these packages. KDE has opted NOT to deal with it, at least so far. Other projects have fortunately been easier to work with on this issue. pgpL2QEPkAU9F.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE hurts Qt (was Re: LICENSES)
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 11:29:26PM -0700, Chris Waters wrote: Now, I won't install Qt even for the parts of KDE I like. This is the really sad part about this whole mess. Qt is a nice library. Non-free, but not everything has to be free. But because of the refusal of the KDE developers to FIX THE KDE LICENSE PROBLEMS, a lot of people are being turned off of Qt! Qt doesn't deserve this, and I think the KDE team should: 1) fix their license problems, and 2) apologize to Trolltech. Oh, I'm not turned off of Qt because of KDE's license. I'm turned off of Qt because I don't install non-free software for other than entertainment purposes if I can help it. The three things I cannot help yet are pgp, ssh, and netscape. Mozilla is not yet stable, gnupg is almost there, and psst seems to hav a ways to go before it can replace ssh. However, it's sad that the license mess is keeping KDE out of Debian where users who don't worry so much about free software as I do could find it more easily. I don't want to be dependant on a non-free library like that, but others don't mind. I wouldn't be surprised if the KDE license problem wasn't the result of a few flames of Troll Tech. Certainly the demands to make Qt GPL software deserve no attention, but it would be wonderful if Qt's license were more compatible with the GPL. Troll Tech is under no obligation to change its license, even if it gives the (apparently false) impression that the stock GPL can be used with its library. To the KDE team: it doesn't matter whether you believe that the GPL is compatible with Qt. The GPL may be open to interpretation, but that's not relevant -- the biggest problem with the KDE license is the existence of the controversy! Which isn't going to go away unless you persuade RMS to accept your interpretation (good luck!), or you add an exception clause to the license, or switch to a GPL-compatible library. Until one of those three things happens, KDE is doing Troll a disservice. (Fourth option: get a ruling from a judge in every country KDE is used in.) As long as KDE is unwilling to admit that there is a potential problem and as long as Troll Tech shares that belief, there is going to be controversy. Troll Tech has not been innocent of claiming there's no clashing between GPL and Qt Free Editon's license. If I were building a linux distribution I would not include KDE even *if* I were willing to admit that your interpretation of the GPL *might* be right -- which I am. I'd want to be sure! (Unless I had deep enough pockets to feel that the risk was worth it.) But then I live in the USA, where people sue at the drop of a hat. The great american pastime is not baseball but rather lawsuit, that's for damned sure. pgpBdL0lIaBzy.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mpg123 contains GPL code?
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 10:31:08PM -0700, Ben Gertzfield wrote: This was forwarded to me by a freeamp developer. He said that mpg123 contains GPL'd code, but its license prohibits non-free use. Anyone know what the legal status of mpg123 is? mpg123 is non-free all right. No commercial use. The author needs to be contacted and asked to either replace the GPL code or change his license to be compatible with the GPL code he's using. If the upstream author doesn't wanna do that, out it must go. = pgpH3dsMWEjEn.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 09:20:55AM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote: Has it been verified that lyx can't be linked against fltk? Just try and you see it won't compile. But I have not much knowledge about these toolkits so maybe someone can easily port it. Also I remember someone working on a gtk version. Is there anything out there? There are those possibilities, but the lyx people will probably give permission for linking with libforms since they clearly intend for that to be done. The biggest problem with KDE was outside code that was ported and that the KDE people did not want to make the needed changes. Has anyone yet contacted the lyx people? IMO we should try to keep lyx. Or do we have an alternative to offer? With kde we could say try gnome which IMO is much better anyway. This is not, I repeat -NOT- about whether or not we can replace KDE with Gnome or we can replace lyx with anything else. We should try to convince the lyx people to make the changes we need to allow us to keep lyx, just as we tried with KDE. I agreed that KDE needed to be removed because of the license problems, NOT because it was non-free code or anything so petty. pgpkowzbjAC9U.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 01:08:28PM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote: Craig Sanders wrote: imo, we should grant Lyx the same courtesy we did KDE. send them a request to change their license, and give them some time (say a few weeks rather than the months that KDE got) to change. if they ignore the request or choose not to change their license then we have to yank the software. I wonder if you know that LyX is founded by the same person who has founded KDE some years later. Not that this has to imply anyghing... It's irrelevant. Lyx is free code using a license that does not allow us to link it with non-free code. We can't distribute it if they won't modify their license. But like KDE, they deserve a chance to do something about it. pgp6zXVig5wlG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?]
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 05:29:08PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote: In my opinion, Qt is not a section of KDE, it is not derived from the KDE and it must be considered independent and separate from the KDE. In other words: The KDE's usage of the GPL does not cause the GPL, and its terms, to apply to Qt. Indeed Qt is not part of the problem Thank you Alan, a few people still seem to believe otherwise. Care to borrow a few cluebats? You're going to need them. While Qt's license does not help matters much by saying that it may be used with GPL'd software, there is nothing wrong with it saying so, realizing of course that the GPL'd software in question must expressly permit its use since Qt is not available on every platform as part of the base system. Motif is on Solaris, but that's Motif and Solaris. The issue for Debian is Debian GNU/Linux and Qt, which by Debian's social contract will never be included as part of the base system. This means at least for Debian GNU/Linux, binaries cannot be distributed linked with Qt without express permission. That's why Debian had to remove KDE. Qt is not distributed as part of KDE. It is distributed as part of various distributions that also include the KDE, but only by mere aggregation [...] on a volume of a storage or distribution medium which the GPL okays elsewhere in the text. It is not a mere aggregation. If I remove Qt KDE is unusable. Furthermore your discussion with Preston Brown re legal issues clearly shows you believe that the question of inline code is a matter of IPR and potential lawsuits therefore you clearly believe the inline C++ code linked by KDE from Qt code is a component I really, truly, and honsetly believe the whole notion that the GPL does not apply to Qt because Qt is merely used by the program and not part of it is merely an attempt to find any possible justification for not fixing the problem in the KDE license--that the GPL prohibits someone to derive a work of another's program which is dependant on non-free software that is not an essential part of the system. Qt is clearly not an essential system library nor is it even a standard system library. It's a piece of non-free code owned by Troll Tech and licensed how Troll Tech chooses to license it, as is their right. Because the GPL does not by default allow people to do this, additional rights to link Qt are required. KDE is unwilling to admit that. If they are willing to admit that at least the possibility exists for Qt not to be a standard system library as it's clearly not in Debian's case, I have offered to help them get the permission they need from other sources. That offer stands, if they are willing to make an effort to fix the problem at all. KDE requires Qt currently. So KDE is non free. Similarly Linus does not distribute KDE with the kernel so its not in the base distribution. On Solaris KDE is shipped even though no Sun product includes Qt. So the case there is even more blatant This would place KDE in Debian's contrib section---not part of Debian, but it would be distributed as free-but-depends-on-non-free software. This is where KDE was, until KDE would not deal with the legitimate claim that there was at least a potential problem without giving permission to link Qt and geting it themselves for things they've ported. Debian feels that it's shaky ground for KDE to not give explicit permission to link Qt, especially since Debian does not include Qt. Debian feels that KDE refuses to fix the problem because they do not wish to get the permission the GPL code they have ported requires them to get, for fear they would not get that permission or that KDE would be considered to be non-free software. As for Sun, they don't earn my respect by further abusing the GPL. I think until I see differently I will consider them in line with Caldera and SuSE. Ie, they have no respect for the GPL or the code written by people who were not even asked if their code could be ported to a non-free library. And I can see that at least three or four of KDE's core developers have the same respect for the GPL, none. People who will not respect the GPL are its true enemies. M$? Big deal, they wouldn't touch GPL code because they wouldn't want to become dependant on something that could require them to rewrite massive amounts of their code or GPL code they had written. The enemy who says he is your enemy is always less dangerous than the enemy who claims to be your friend. And yet, I would help them do the right thing, if they were willing to do it at all, because that would show me they had either enough respect for the GPL to ask for the required permission--or at least realize that they have to ask for it if they wants support from Debian and most of those who DO respect the GPL. KDE would have been better off with the LGPL or with the Artistic license (a personal favorite) IMO. It wouldn't help them with problems like kghostview but it would at
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 07:59:14PM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote: I wonder if you know that LyX is founded by the same person who has founded KDE some years later. Not that this has to imply anyghing... It's irrelevant. Lyx is free code using a license that does not allow us to link it with non-free code. We can't distribute it if they won't modify their license. But like KDE, they deserve a chance to do something about it. That's what I feared. Bye-bye LyX. Possibly, but not just yet, see below... Matthias Ettrich wrote: From: Matthias Ettrich [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: LICENSES [was: Re: Have you seen this?] Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] LyX is in contrib. I don't have it installed, but if it is licensed under the GPL, then you're probably right, and you're free to file a bug report against it. If you don't want to do so, then I'll check it out and file the bug report myself if needed. LyX is buggy, it has licensing problems (unless you compile it yourself). Yeah, file the bug report, highest priority level due to the ethical implications. Remove almost 4 years hard work of more than 20 people who offer the (right now) only usable free document processor for unix. Clearly LyX has been written by scratch but we in the LyX team accepted GPL'ed patches without signed written permissions of the authors to distribute binaries linked to XForms. Shame on us, not LyX has licensing problems! I will remove it from my hard disk immediately. Damn, four years hacking for me and a aresult it's no longer usable for Debian What a great day! Luckily I have an invitation for dinner to celebrate it :-) It's getting harder and harder to take Debian serious. Matthias Lyx does not go away just because there is a bug against it. When the bug is filed the maintainer has reasonable opportunity to fix it, or if not possible, to forward it upstream and let the upstream maintainers take a crack at it. Matthias needs someone to smack him upside with an iron cluebat, several times. We gave KDE a chance to fix their problem. We'll give the same to Lyx. Matthias is TRYING to provoke us. I for one refuse to be. But I'll file the bug against ftp.debian.org to remove lyx if I must myself. It hasn't come to that yet. pgpGFMhL1Fg0f.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [ettrich@troll.no: Live and let live]
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 07:50:43PM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote: I don't want to hide this mail from you. First it's please take license issues to the license list and now it's go away, we don't want you here... If I ever thought Matthias needed to be bludgeoned severely with a cluebat, it's now. I have little respect left for him. Fortunately, a few of the non-core KDE developers show more promise. Hopefully a few of them will continue to try and make sense out of what is otherwise a good project, with a bad license problem. pgpmT63R9uww1.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: KDE gone, Lyx next ?
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 08:23:14PM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote: There are those possibilities, but the lyx people will probably give permission for linking with libforms since they clearly intend for that to be done. The biggest problem with KDE was outside code that was ported and that the KDE people did not want to make the needed changes. Has anyone yet contacted the lyx people? Yes, me. Good, please let us know what you hear back. = This is not, I repeat -NOT- about whether or not we can replace KDE with Gnome or we can replace lyx with anything else. We should try to convince the lyx people to make the changes we need to allow us to keep lyx, just as we tried with KDE. Please read my statement. I never said this is about replacements. I just said we should try to keep it because it is important IMO. Not that we didn't try with KDE though. If I was able to imply it, the KDE people certainly would have. I don't want them to have any excuse for twisting words so they read what they want to read into them. I agreed that KDE needed to be removed because of the license problems, NOT because it was non-free code or anything so petty. No one said that. Good, glad that's clear to most sensable people now. = pgpy6ToVJFJAp.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: intent to remove libglide from non-free
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 01:14:17PM -0700, Ben Gertzfield wrote: Roderick RESTRICTIONS: You may not: 1. Sublicense the Materials; Roderick 2. Reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Roderick enclosed software; 3. Use the Materials for for any Roderick platform or products other than 3Dfx products; 4. Make Roderick copies of the Materials other than for back-up purposes, Roderick and you may not use the back-up copies other than as a Roderick replacement for the original copy. You must include on Roderick the back-up copies all copyright and other notices Roderick included on the Materials; and 5. Export the Materials Roderick in violation of the export control laws of the United Roderick States of America and other countries. This is *so* non-free it can't even go on our FTP site. You can't make copies of the materials other than for back-up purposes. We're currently violating the license if we have it on our FTP sites. They can be contacted for permission for Debian to release .deb packages, however that is not going to float well and would guarantee that the software is non-free (the fact that we'd have to ask kinda spells that one out though..) Perhaps an installer package to pick apart the rpm and install the thing? pgpSC3NrjzzVH.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: office package
On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 10:59:52PM +0200, Bart Schuller wrote: I wonder if and when we get together a real office package under gnome. I wouldlove to see that. My personal favorites would be a glyx, gtksql with poistgresql and a spreadsheet, currently siag seems to be the best bet. But that one's not with gtk either. Then you'll just *love* to know that I noticed something called KSiag on http://www.kde.org/news_dyn.html Do the siag people know about this? = Sigh! Indeed. Sorry for the heavy sarcasm. thwap pgpwArDXuA6nZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Release Critical Bugs List
On Fri, Oct 02, 1998 at 07:00:31PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: Contrib and Non-free packages can't have release critical bugs -- they're not even an official part of debian. yeah yeah, the package ain't part of Debian anymore because of a lack of license and no way to get the author to fix it. =p Sue me. = pgppdwUlW6Dj8.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The freeze and IMMINENT 2.2.0p1!!
On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 03:05:17PM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote: Linux 2.2 is a good candidate for the next unstable to play with. I believe that it will be fun, but I also forsee that there will be problems. I hope our release manager won't jump on that train too quick. Agreed. There are still problems in 2.1.x that NEED to be adressed and they won't happen in a week or even two weeks. Save it for the next release which could be Debian 3.0 with full apt and 2.2.x kernel, among other things. (Provided all that works) pgpNvdrJCvyNq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: suggestion - AntiVir for Linux
On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 10:36:24AM +0100, Birgitt Simon wrote: Dear Sirs, we know you as a distributor of program packages for Linux. We, the H+BEDV Datentechnik GmbH, are developer and distributor of the virus protection program AntiVir for Linux. Since 1988, when the number of computer viruses in Germany could be counted on one hand, we deal with the subject virus protection. In the last 11 years we won a lot of awards for our anti-virus products in Germany. Our main market is currently Germany and the german speaking market. Now we are going to expand our distribution area. We would like to make you following suggestion, for our both advantage. We offer you a free version from AntiVir for Linux, so that you will deliver our program with your next distribution CD-ROM. So your customers are able to use a virus protection program under Linux and you add value to your program package. I'm sure someone would be happy to package it in .deb format, but by the sounds of your message neither source is included and only non-commercial use is permitted. Either one of these would cause Debian to place your product in its non-free section as it fails the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract). The package would be on the FTP mirrors and people could download and even distribute on CD-ROM that package, but the non-free section would never be distributed by Debian. Many vendors do though, so it's probably not a major worry. pgp2wqc3sxjEO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How about using bzip2 as the standard *.deb compression format?
On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 06:40:09AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: dpkg remains the primary bottleneck in the setup, and apt calls dpkg anyway, so the different is not really significant, and apt-get update is slow too. The update phase seems to be slow because of translating the package files to dselect's format on my system. (pending apt's GUI, I'm using dselect) If dselect could use apt's native format, that would be faster. If package files were made by section, apt would not have to download main's pacakages.gz everytime one little package in one little section was updated. dpkg too would benefit from using a hashed database for lookups too, though I think a text database that could be rehased would be nice too. If others think that's not necessary, I'll live without it. After all, dpkg is quite stable despite a couple buglets. If the new database code were also stable (read: simplistic enough that it would just work) I'd not worry about dpkg losing its database or anything. I'm curious as to what enhancements Ian has planned for dpkg whenever he finds time to return to working on it. pgpwMhJmr2xQ6.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: suggestion - AntiVir for Linux
On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 09:55:19AM -0400, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: I'm sure someone would be happy to package it in .deb format, but by the sounds of your message neither source is included and only non-commercial use is permitted. Either one of these would cause Debian to place your product in its non-free section as it fails the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract). The package would be on the FTP mirrors and people could download and even distribute on CD-ROM that package, but the non-free section would never be distributed by Debian. Many vendors do though, so it's probably not a major worry. I didn't catch the begining of this thead but... if noone else has stepped up I would be happy to work on this. (from the first statement of I'm sure someone would be happy to package it in .deb format it sounds like noone has yet) Nope, but if you want to go ahead and contact them for info. I'm not terribly interested in packaging something that'd have to go into non-free if it wasn't something I'd really use everyday. Since I have no windoze boxen on this LAN (or even really a LAN at this time) there's no need for me to run antivirus software. I can't make out from the snippit of the original message if this would be distributable via FTP site like this or not...seems like it... but if not I would be happy to package it in deb format so that it could be distributed by others that way. Permission for Debian redistribution is fine for a non-free package, but in order to be in main (and on ALL Debian CDs) it would have to be essentially free to all with source code.. Of course one can make a professional version that is non-free and you can suggest commercial businesses use that, maybe it'd have some kind of network support or something. But the version Debian would be able to distribute in main would have to be free, with source, allowed to be distributed further than Debian, and no requirements as to who can or cannot use it. Otherwise it's not Free Software and is just software you don't have to pay for.. pgpMCX33lUql1.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How about using bzip2 as the standard *.deb compression format?
On Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 03:50:01PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: This is silly. dpkg/dselect are already insanely slow, even on my P166 with 128 meg of RAM -- especially when reading database, etc. If we slow down the installation so much more by using bzip2, then people will simply stop upgrading, or switch to other distributions because it is so slow. That is not acceptable. Um, not all of us are using dselect/dpkg. Most of us refuse to because it's insanely slow and generally braindead if you have a serious conflict. I use dselect/apt myself. pgpNPlhjmG8xs.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Live file system
On Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 03:40:24PM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote: IIRC Dale Scheetz used to have one for bo (sorry if I'm wrong, Dale :) Well, not exactly. What I do is an imbedded file system that can be installed on a DOS/Windows/'95 file system as simple files and booted with a special patched kernel using the loop device. BTW, DiD is available in hamm as well as bo versions for anyone interested ;-) The way I see to do this You have boot files on the CD, like you would on a rescue floppy, in fact you COULD have a rescue floppy, but that rescue floppy would have a much simpler install function... To install, just figure out where user wants this stuff to be and create a Debian dir for them on the filesystem they choose which will have an initrd and stuff, and then build them a ext2 image with extra space for /, with /etc and /var and an empty /usr. The initrd's job? Mount the filesystem (probably msdos or vfat) and set up the loopback fs so it'll be mounted as root. The init stuff for the loopback root of course mounts your cdrom someplace and makes /usr be what's on the live filesystem.. You now have canned Debian in about 30-50 megs HD space. The same technique could be used for a no-partitioning-needed installation (someone posted a message about that, forget who) Take that and add a way for the initrd to find the device containing the loopback / image and you'll have the basis for Debian on things like Zip and Superdisks that can be downloaded and unpacked to the disk and it'll set itself up even as bootable, etc. Why do that? My rescue zip disk project, which I WILL get back to at some point. I had gotten as far as an idea of how to do the part you've apparently done already---the / loopback deal---and was trying to figure out a good way to find the image from the initrd.. Maybe some magic filenames or something, I have no idea how best to do it actually. pgpKD1RcTFl4f.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: exim really does need to be the standard MTA in slink
On Mon, Oct 05, 1998 at 11:39:36PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: in the message IDed as [EMAIL PROTECTED], Robert Woodcock [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote this on Mon, 05 Oct 1998 20:31:24 PDT: Yeah, I know this makes at least the second reincarnation of this thread in the last 6 months, but I really think exim should be the standard MTA in slink. (I am not a voter here.) Fine... but PLEASE don't make decisions that would make any of the other mailers unusable to any degree (that's for everyone else), -especially- sendmail (that's for me). To use sendmail on a new Debian system requires an extra effort to install it. That's not the case with smail. It is with exim too currently. WHat is being asked is to make the default mailer for those who don't want to or need to mess with another mailer be exim. Based on exim's relative ease of setup, this is a good thing. It sets up a lot like smail, so even if you don't like eximconfig it's not much different than smailconfig except of course that the results work more often than with smailconfig. Exim is also extremely configurable. It's a little hairy in places to do so, but no more than (far less than) sendmail. Having said all that, smarthosting didn't work for me I find out because my connection was not permanent. pgpkUXTUqJuMq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Post dups
On Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 04:33:13AM +0100, Ragnar Hojland Espinosa wrote: Getting lots lots of dups of everything, from 2 to up to 6 copies. :0 Wh: msgid.lock | formail -D 8192 msgid.cache pgpVViWzrtIcE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Free, but crappy, kaffe.
On Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 12:41:51PM +0200, Paul Slootman wrote: I did, however, list my sex as a narcoleptic rat monkey with the spirit of an androgenous toaster in the chakras of a Kentucky NAMBLA representative or something along those lines. ;- Of course, that should have been listed as species, not sex. I always thought the answer to sex was supposed to be Yes or Sure, why not? pgpu5bywyeuDG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: what's after slink
On Sun, Oct 04, 1998 at 05:38:02PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote: The namespase lasts for five more releases. Or do I misunderstand something? On a related note, do we want to continue using names from pixar movies now that Bruce is gone? Does it really matter? pgpGlHXoyGpzD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PGP in the US (Re: formal documents)
On Sun, Oct 04, 1998 at 11:23:52AM -0400, Kikutani Makoto wrote: I'm a Japanese living in the United States, but not a permanent resident. I've heared that the usage of PGP in the States by a person like me is controversial. I posted this qestion to some related Mailing-Lists (such as mutt-users). Someone said No problem, someone said You shouldn't use it. I'm very confused. If you brought it with you (and can PROVE it) there is probably no problem in theory. Yes, my PGP is an international version which was built in Japan, and I brought it in my laptop. But of course I can't prove it. I've considered to join Debian maintainer before. But I gave up it because the PGP problem is not clear. Just shrug and consider it a non-issue. Be sure before you return that you delete PGP from your system. You can reaquire it when you cross the borders easy enough. Importing PGP is no problem, exporting it is a big one---assuming they catch you before you're out of reach. chuckle I wouldn't worry about it till then though. pgpYqHoJsN36I.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: pine in other distributions
On Sun, Oct 04, 1998 at 11:34:18AM -0400, Kikutani Makoto wrote: I'm sorry, Pine again (and again and...). Does anybody know if other distributions (RedHat, slack...) have Pine package ? yes. If they have it, I assume their license policy is not hard as Debian. Either they break the pine license or they distribute pine as compiled by pristine source, known bugs and all. Debian applies bugfixes and the license which accompanies pine---not Debian's restrictions but UW's---keeps pine out of even non-free. = Complain to UW about this if you like, but I suspect you'll be talking to a brick wall there. I know one Japanese company is selling Linux CDs which contain a Japanese version of Pine. In fact, the company is PHT Japan. Strictly speaking, their distribution isn't RedHat, but almost the same type distribution using RPM. makoto -- Kikutani, Makoto [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Linux related only) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgpqNFCVnpFeZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PGP in the US (Re: formal documents)
On Sun, Oct 04, 1998 at 10:49:26AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you brought it with you (and can PROVE it) there is probably no problem in theory. It doesn't matter where he got it. It is entirely legal for anyone to use or distribute strong crypto in the US. The only restriction is on export. He is perfectly safe as long as he does not take it with him when he goes home. Many people have corrected me on this. I thought it was not acceptable for a foriegner to aquire crypto from a US citizen. That misconception has been explained. pgpCijlYM1Adh.pgp Description: PGP signature
