Re: emacs too big for knoppix?

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     > Knoppix includes non-free software.  Regardless of whether
>     > Emacs is included in it, people should not use Knoppix.
> 
>     Oh, but Knoppix is just the road to installing a Debian system
>     to one's hard disk eventually.
> 
> This may be true in some cases, but "installing a Debian system" is
> not a well-defined destination.  Debian distributes non-free
> packages as well as free ones.  Using Knoppix as it stands may be a
> road to installing Debian with non-free packages and leaving it that
> way.

So is the Internet.  Should we discourage getting Emacs via the
Internet since one could install non-free packages that way, too?

I'd love to add something akin to not being more papist than the pope,
but it would be sort of tautological.

Anyhow, I don't know the Debian package system, but if I remember
correctly, it does make it obvious which packages are free and which
are unfree, and so the choice is for the user to make.  Freedom
includes the user's freedom to install non-free software, and our
freedom to pester^W educate him about it.  As long as we are dealing
with informed choices, I guess that is more or less the extent of what
one can and should do.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum