Re: Knoppix is not entirely free software

[Peter S Galbraith <p.galbraith@globetrotter.net>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@elta.co.il> wrote:

> > Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:30:36 -0500
> > From: Peter S Galbraith <p.galbraith@globetrotter.net>
> > > 
> > > If he has changed his policies in the meantime, please tell me; that
> > > would be good news.  But otherwise, please do not recommend the use of
> > > Knoppix on GNU mailing lists.  Please recommend only entirely free
> > > software.
> > 
> > I'll likely regret this, but:
> > 
> > $ grep netscape browse-url.el | wc
> >      38     161    2011
> 
> The fact that Netscape is mentioned in browse-url.el doesn't mean
> Emacs recommends it, just that it uses it when it's the only tool to
> do a certain job.  When a free and a non-free program can be used to
> do the same job, Emacs ought to use the free one, though.  If you can
> spot such cases in browse-url, please report them as bugs.

That's not what RMS said a few weeks ago when he was told we had support
for glimpse in MH-E.  He said:

: :    I am a huge fan of mail indexing programs like: swish++, mairix,
: :    glimpse, namazu etc.
:
: I seem to recall that glimpse is or was non-free.  I don't know about
: the others.  Can you check which of these are non-free?  We don't
: want Gnus or MH-E to refer to them.

So we removed support for glimpse.

So how is netscape support in browse-url any different?  Should we
revert that change from CVS?

(I _did_ say I'd regret bringing this up.)

Peter