Re: License problems with Pine MUA?

[Sean Jewett <sean@rimboy.com>]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Drews, Jonathan* wrote:

>  I am using Pine at home, on my NetBSD laptop. When I installed it, I had to
> put a special flag in my /etc/make.conf to allow the pkg_src to download and
> build. The reason for this flag is because the NetBSD folks objected to the
> license.

I'm really starting to get tired of distributions thinking they're taking
the high road by forcing the user to go thru these hoops.  They're not
doing anyone any favors and are wasting their time and their users times
by inventing new hoops to jump thru.  It's one thing to flash some sort of 
message during the installation (even then that's pushing it), it's 
another to force users to modify the installer to make it work.  

I thought the whole purpose of Open Source was to allow us to use our 
computer the way we want, not the way some other person thinks is best.  

Note, I'm not picking on NetBSD (I put Theo in the same love/hate 
relationship I have with RMS), there were apparently some rumblings in the 
Debian camps to do away with the non-free services.  I don't know the full 
story and did not pay much attention to what our local Debian developer 
was saying because, well, it's Debian ;)

>  My question: Is there some reason I should not be using Pine?

I see no reason to, especially if you're familiar with it.  At some point 
if they've not already (I've got a couple people in my killfile on this 
list) the muttanistas will pop up and tell you mutt is the one true way, 
much like those living in emacistan will tell you more arcane ctrl 
modifiers and a lack of system resources after starting emacs is really 
the only way to go.  

I've said it once and I'll say it again, Pico dammit!   Seriously though, 
you're not bound to Pico, I know others that have configured pine to use 
vi.  Nano is an interesting project to keep tabs on.  It's a Pico clone, 
however they're adding some of the features of vi that some of us pico 
users would really like to see (ie, syntax highlighting).  At last check 
it's Free and development seems to be coming along fairly well.  

I've been a pine user for ~9 years (gasp, my 10 year anniversary of 
discovering pine on our university's HP/UX system is just around the 
corner).  It's always been good enough, I'm not a power user by any means.  
I'm one of those it works so I don't fix it types.

Weird, there's another pine discussion taking place on another list I'm 
on.  2 Pine threads in a 24 hour period?  I've been pining for this day. 
(rimshot).

Sean...

--
The punk rock will get you if the government don't get you first.
	--Old 97's
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