The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: FSF negociations

On Wed, 24 Apr 1996, Bruce Perens wrote:

> I need a poll on how positive or negative you guys are on these FSF
> requests:

Summary:

I vote "NO" to everything.


my reasoning:

> 1. Install 100% unstripped executables on the hard disk.

No, not at all.  What a waste of disk space, not to mention waste of
time downloading unnecessarily bloated binaries.

If I want the symbols I'll fetch the sources and recompile it myself.

> 2. Install source code on the hard disk whenever the binary package is
>    installed.

I like having the option to install the exact same source which my
binaries were made from, but would hate to be forced to install source
for stuff that I'm probably never going to want to re-compile.

If I want source, I'll fetch it and install it myself.  I know where the
ftp site is...or I may even have it on CD.

> 3. Make X-Windows, Emacs, and VI standard, not optional, parts of the
> system.

X-Windows
---------

Nice but not essential.  

Some people would prefer a fast text based system to a slow graphical
system...I did until I upgraded from 8M to 16M.

Also, some Debian systems are installed as special purpose
machines...who wants X on a simple router/gateway, or on a news server?
I certainly don't.  One of Linux' virtues is that it can run on a 2MB
386-16sx if necessary...and that's certainly adequate for a cheap router
box.

At the most, I might want the X shared libraries and a couple of status
display utils so I can set the DISPLAY variable to my main workstation.

Emacs
-----

Hideous, bloated, and certainly not essential.  

Why should I *have* to install over a dozen megabytes of binaries and
support files for a program I'm never going to use?  I've tried it
before several times and just can't bring myself to like it.  I've tried
real hard but I just can't do it.

Holy wars & flames to /dev/null please.  You follow your sick & twisted
path of emacs use, and i'll follow my sick & twisted path of vi use.


VI
--

How could anyone live without it?  Still optional, though.
Different people have different tastes in editors.  Some people even
like emacs...strange but true. :-)

On the other hand, a small fast line oriented editor (such as vi or ed
or even ms-dos' edlin) is really useful.  You can drive them over the
phone by telling the dummy...oops user...at the other end exactly what
keystrokes to push.

I'd like to see vi on the install disks instead of the so-called easy
editor.

-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root        64445 Apr 13 09:38 /usr/bin/ee*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root       106500 Nov 22 13:45 /usr/bin/elvis*

Only 40K of difference.  Is disk space that tight?

(Hey, i just noticed that elvis is dated Nov 22.  And it's still QMAGIC.
Is there a new ELF package for elvis?)


Craig

--
  cas@muffin.pronet.com                                cas@muffin.apana.org.au
   *       Unix Consulting:  Installation, Configuration, & Support.        *