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I have to add my nickel's worth here. Mike, Caleb, Stewart and another |
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respondent - nailed the crux of the issue. Gentoo allows us choice - if we |
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want an all free distro we can do it with Gentoo; if we want to use |
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non-free/commerical software we can do it with Gentoo. What's happening here |
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is that those who feel "all free or nothing" want to impose their beliefs and |
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philosophy on anyone - all their blather about choice is really just "I |
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believe this and am going to make the rest of the world conform to my choice." |
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|
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I've served my time as a Windows admin/maintainer/user/whatever and I hope I |
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never go back there. I want as much or more than these free only zealots to |
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see OpenSource, Gentoo etc. succede in replacing MS wherever possible and we |
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are making excellent strides. Brazil is for it, towns in Germany, and |
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Britian are wanting to go to OpenSource software. And Gentoo can be part of |
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that. However, if we become like Debian and go free only Gentoo will be |
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considered a fanatics distro and written off - and it will become a niche |
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distro that appeals to a small group. |
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|
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Whether people like it or not they have to consider reality. The reality is |
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that many of us such as these countries moving to OpenSource and many of us |
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users have a job to do - we don't do it we don't get paid. So we use the |
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best tools for the job. If there is something free that is obviously the |
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first consideration - AS LONG as it does the job well enough. If not we use |
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whatever suits the needs. Crossover and VMWare are two excellent examples of |
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commerical software that does what no free software does - allow you to run |
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MS programs on Linux. No, don't tell me about Wine - it doesn't run much of |
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the MS software. So if we have a need to run MS apps (and yes, that is part |
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of the reality) do we tell our customers "I believe in only free so I will |
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use Wine but it won't really work for what you want to do" or do we use what |
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works in the form of Crossover or VMWare. If I don't use what works best I |
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am not servicing my customer properly and I will lose him. |
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|
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Gentoo is the best distro out there - bar none. Gentoo has addressed the |
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biggest bugaboo of a distro and overcome it. Portage provides us a clean |
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easy way to keep updated and track what we have done. No more infinite loops |
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looking for RPM dependencies and hoping you got the right version. This |
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alone makes Gentoo better but add to this an attitude that Gentoo should help |
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us to our job and allow us to run systems as we want them, whether is only |
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free software or a mix, and not force a political philosophy down our throats |
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makes Gentoo the very best. |
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|
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Leave Gentoo as it is. If someone feels so strongly they just can not even |
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look at a distro that allows non-free software there is always Debian. |
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|
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Like Mike I would have to dump Gentoo if they insist on joinng the Debian |
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camp but I hope that Gentoo stays true to it's philosophy of given us easy to |
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use distro which allows choice so both free and non-free can have systems |
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that satisfy them. |
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|
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On Saturday 22 November 2003 02:43, you wrote: |
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> On Saturday 22 November 2003 02:32, Jon Portnoy wrote: |
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> > Quick poll of people reading this thread: Would you like to see the |
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> > removal of nonfree software from the tree? That means things like |
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> > vmware, the java packages, etc. |
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> |
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> i hope you're kidding ... |
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> to be honest, if such a move were made, i'd wave goodbye to Gentoo ... |
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> i joined because Gentoo offers such a choice ... the distro isnt bogged |
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> down by pointless fanatics crying GNU GNU GNU <insert your cause here> |
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> -mike |
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|
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-- |
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