Subject: Bug#4339: no free pine package available

From: Marek Michalkiewicz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 15:49:50 +0200 (MET DST)

Package: ftp.debian.org

The current version of pine is in non-free because the copyright
is not clear.  We really should talk to the maintainers - perhaps
we can get permission to distribute the package as part of the
distribution?  (FYI, it's in Red Hat, and those guys are quite
careful about copyrights, too...)

Even if we don't get permission (say, Red Hat paid them lots of
$$$ to get a license), I think we should still distribute an
older version (before the copyright change - I think it was 3.92)
in the regular distribution (just like we do with ghostscript).
Are there any problems with this?

Marek

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From: Dale Scheetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 14:26:25 -0400 (EDT)

> careful about copyrights, too...)

The copyright is quite clear. You can not distribute this package for a
fee without first getting permission from the pine developers. According
to our policy this requires it go into non-free.
We have "talked" with the developers about changing this. In the next
version they changed the wording but the intent remained the same. I will
be working on the new release (when I can find some time) and I will check
the copyright again to see if things have improved.

> Are there any problems with this?
The older version has some substantial bugs that have been fixed in later
releases. It is my understanding that we do not distribute buggy software
when the fix is available. The ghostscript example is, I think, a
temporary solution while a new release is awaited.
Unless someone with more authority than myself agrees with you, I am
disinclined to re-release the old version. Barring further instructions
from that direction, I will close this bug report.

Luck,

Dwarf

------------                                          --------------

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 877-0257
      Flexible Software              Fax:     NONE 
      Black Creek Critters           e-mail:  [email-masked]

------------ If you don't see what you want, just ask --------------

---

From: Marek Michalkiewicz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 21:59:47 +0200 (MET DST)

> to our policy this requires it go into non-free.

Now I noticed that the copyright has changed, the new one (same in
version 3.94 and 3.95; the new Red Hat beta contains 3.95) looks
better to me.  It says:

| Redistribution of this release is permitted as follows, or by mutual
| agreement:
[...]
|  (c) Inclusion in a CD-ROM collection of free-of-charge, shareware, or
|      non-proprietary software for which a fee may be charged for the
|      packaged distribution.

Isn't this good enough?  It sounds clear to me, but then I'm not
a lawyer...  If not - have you tried to ask them for individual
permission similar to that in the procmail package?  Here is it:

| The copyright statement below is addended for the Debian system:
|        This program may be sold as a component of the Debian Linux
|        distribution or a Linux distribution derived from the Debian
|        Linux distribution. If it is distributed in binary form, the
|        source code must be included in the distribution as well.
| End of addendum.

(procmail would be non-free without this - the original copyright
says that it may not be sold).

> releases. It is my understanding that we do not distribute buggy software

I see.  The fix is available - but is non-free.  I can see that you
may not like to do the extra work of maintaining two versions of
the same package, but perhaps we can just say that the older version
is completely unsupported?  I hope someone still has a copy of the
old package, which could be put in contrib.  Buggy software might
sometimes be better than no software at all...

I rarely use pine myself (usually only when I have to read some
MIME-encrypted mail :-), but I know it's quite popular.  It would
be a pity if we can't ship a MIME-aware mailer with the standard
distribution.

Marek

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From: Guy Maor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 13:44:31 -0500 (CDT)

On Thu, 29 Aug 1996, Marek Michalkiewicz wrote:

> is not clear.

The onus rests on the pine maintainer, not me, so I'm reassigning this
to pine.

Guy

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From: Buddha Buck <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 01:42:55 -0400

> be a pity if we can't ship a MIME-aware mailer with the standard

How odd...

I seem to have a /usr/bin/exmh, and exmh isn't in my /usr/local/bin.  I 
consider exmh to be the most MIME-aware mailer I've had the pleasure to 
use.  If it isn't in my /usr/local/bin, ., ~/bin, or 
/usr/local/openwin.bin, but I'm using it on my system, then it must be 
part of the Debian distribution, or my system is really messed up...

Exmh is an optional package in the mail section.  According to dselect, 
it depends on tk41, tcl75, mh, and metamail.  Metamail is a general 
package to handle MIME types unknown to your mailer.  Most of the 
mailers out there (including pine) use metamail transparantly.  
However, exmh is very MIME-aware on its own.  It will automatically 
display enriched-text correctly, handle multipart MIME messages well 
(both multipart/mixed and multipart/alternative), and integrates well 
with PGP.

-- 
     Buddha Buck                      [email-masked]
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacaphony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects."  -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice