[OT] Re: Fedora Core 2 wishlists

[Paul Heinlein]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Steven Pritchard wrote:

> And both pine and elm are long gone from the distribution.

pine is an interesting case. A quick header check on this message will
show that I use it, so I'm not an unbiased observer.

Leaving aside the issue of security vulnerabilities raised by Mark
Lane, the problem as I understand it is that the UW license doesn't
allow third parties to distribute patched binary versions of pine.
IOW,

* I can distribute a binary version of pine if and only if I don't
  alter the official source release at all.

* I can distribute patches alongside the official pine source code,
  but only in source format.

Obviously, Fedora is no place for a package with a restrictive license
like that. Still, pine is well known and will continue to be widely
used for some time.

Is there a way that we can make available some packages *only* in
src.rpm format? Then we could add patches to our heart's content,
without violating either the letter or the spirit of UW's license.

--Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com>