[Mailman-Developers] print >> sys.stderr does not compile

[Marc MERLIN]

On Tue, Feb 20, 2001 at 12:20:27PM -0500, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
>     F> The explanation is here; python2.0 does not have the right
>     F> license for Debian. Consequence: mailman is currently not
>     F> compatible with debian.
> 
>     F> http://lists.debian.org/debian-python-0102/msg00028.html
> 
> Two comments, which I'm not directing at the Debian folks because they
> need to make their own decisions, and because I don't know who at
> Debian to direct these to.
> 
> First, I don't buy the backwards compatibility argument.  Yes, some
> code broke, but it was broken anyway (people using undocumented APIs).
> The broken code is easily fixed.

You're right and that's not it.
For instance  bash2 wasn't fully  compatible with  bash1, but while  Red Hat
never had the balls  to push bash2 as default bash,  debian did, even though
it broke a few things that were really errors in the user scripts.

The problem is that if the license  was categorized as non free according to
Debian's free  software guidelines, they  fork the  package so that  you can
decide to run python from debian main, or python2 from non-free.
Had they called python2, python, there would  have been no way for a user to
keep the  'free' python if  he/she had non-free  in his/her list  of package
sources.

This is merely a packaging issue.

Marc

PS: don't flame me about what's free  or non free, I know nothing about this
specific  issue, I'm  just explaining  what  the technical  reasons for  the
package split would be.
-- 
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ....
                                      .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
  
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