Change for Caldera OpenLinux Workstation

Lutz Horn lh at lutz-horn.de
Thu Jun 28 17:28:15 UTC 2001


Hi all,

* Lars Weber <me at lars.in-berlin.de> [20010628 19:05 +0200]:
> What might be better is a simple webpage with distributions
> categorized by the following criteria:
> 
>   a) Consists entirely of Free Software
> 
>   b) Free-Software-only version is available
> 
>   c) Can be turned into Free-Software-only without too much of a
>   hassle
> 
>   d) Difficult or impossible to use without non-free software

This should include the way updates for packages are provided and which
tools are needed to add them to the system. As far as I know even SuSE
uses RPM these days put adding updated RPMs to the system _not_ using
yast could be a little bit of a problem.

So even it the format used for the packages (RPM) and the tools to deal
with them (rpm - the command line utiliy) are free, this will not bring
the distribution into a) or b) above if the system will fail if you
alter config files by hand while using a non-free tool (yast), that
wrecks up your handiwork, at the same time. I would consider this a case
of d) since the original distribution can only serve as a base
installation to build a free system on. If you can only turn the system
into a free one by not using the distribution specific tools and
features, the whole distribution should be considered non-free.

Regards
Lutz
-- 
Lutz Horn <lh at lutz-horn.de>
For PGP information see header.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 240 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20010628/3b4940dc/attachment.sig>


More information about the Discussion mailing list