Pine in Hoary

[Chuck Vose]

> It seems like mutt uses vi :-(. All this silly OSS politics. Pine is
> available for redistribution, without needing to get permission from
> UWash, to all distros that don't sell themselves (does Ubuntu do
> that)! If you want to modify it *and* redistribute then you need
> permission. IIRC pico is included in Ubuntu. No reason pine couldn't
> also be included.
> 
> YDL sells its distro (though, it also allows downloads) and
> distributes pine with it (& I doubt UWash demands any $$$ for the
> right to redistribute for non-paying customers since YDL couldn't
> afford to be giving away apps they paid for for free).

In the FSF definition of free there's another condition on 'freedom':
the inability to remove this freedome. As it is the UW can choose to
make pine/pico/pilot pay-for-play whenever they choose. They probably
won't but you never know. They also require that changes made include
a L on the version number so that Pine is never a community project
and can never (legally) become owned by the community.

This is why you won't find qmail or pine anywhere near a distribution
that is based on the Stallman version of freedom. Debian and Ubuntu
are extremely concerned with making sure the software used is free in
all the Stallman ways. If you want, Fedora could care less whether the
software is free or not and is an incredibly good distro. Ubuntu folks
however are on the other side of the moral fence and we intend to keep
it that way.

-Chuck