I have to add my nickel's worth here.  Mike, Caleb, Stewart and another 
respondent - nailed the crux of the issue.   Gentoo allows us choice - if we 
want an all free distro we can do it with Gentoo; if we want to use 
non-free/commerical software we can do it with Gentoo.  What's happening here 
is that those who feel "all free or nothing" want to impose their beliefs and 
philosophy on anyone - all their blather about choice is really just "I 
believe this and am going to make the rest of the world conform to my choice."

I've served my time as a Windows admin/maintainer/user/whatever and I hope I 
never go back there.  I want as much or more than these free only zealots to 
see OpenSource, Gentoo etc. succede in replacing MS wherever possible and we 
are making excellent strides.  Brazil is for it, towns in Germany, and 
Britian are wanting to go to OpenSource software.  And Gentoo can be part of 
that.  However, if we become like Debian and go free only Gentoo will be 
considered a fanatics distro and written off - and it will become a niche 
distro that appeals to a small group.  

Whether people like it or not they have to consider reality.  The reality is 
that many of us such as these countries moving to OpenSource and many of us 
users have a job to do - we don't do it we don't get paid.  So we use the 
best tools for the job.  If there is something free that is obviously the 
first consideration - AS LONG as it does the job well enough.  If not we use 
whatever suits the needs.  Crossover and VMWare are two excellent examples of 
commerical software that does what no free software does - allow you to run 
MS programs on Linux.  No, don't tell me about Wine - it doesn't run much of 
the MS software.  So if we have a need to run MS apps (and yes, that is part 
of the reality) do we tell our customers "I believe in only free so I will 
use Wine but it won't really work for what you want to do" or do we use what 
works in the form of Crossover or VMWare.  If I don't use what works best I 
am not servicing my customer properly and I will lose him.

Gentoo is the best distro out there - bar none.  Gentoo has addressed the 
biggest bugaboo of a distro and overcome it.  Portage provides us a clean 
easy way to keep updated and track what we have done.  No more infinite loops 
looking for RPM dependencies and hoping you got the right version.  This 
alone makes Gentoo better but add to this an attitude that Gentoo should help 
us to our job and allow us to run systems as we want them, whether is only 
free software or a mix, and not force a political philosophy down our throats 
makes Gentoo the very best.

Leave Gentoo as it is.  If someone feels so strongly they just can not even 
look at a distro that allows non-free software there is always Debian.

Like Mike I would have to dump Gentoo if they insist on joinng the Debian 
camp but I hope that Gentoo stays true to it's philosophy of given us easy to 
use distro which allows choice so both free and non-free can have systems 
that satisfy them.

On Saturday 22 November 2003 02:43, you wrote:
> On Saturday 22 November 2003 02:32, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> > Quick poll of people reading this thread: Would you like to see the
> > removal of nonfree software from the tree? That means things like
> > vmware, the java packages, etc.
>
> i hope you're kidding ...
> to be honest, if such a move were made, i'd wave goodbye to Gentoo ...
> i joined because Gentoo offers such a choice ... the distro isnt bogged
> down by pointless fanatics crying GNU GNU GNU <insert your cause here>
> -mike

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