etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

[Bert Freudenberg]

Am 26.06.2008 um 10:53 schrieb Albert Cahalan:

>>> This idea of applying patch collections is disturbing. It reminds
>>> me of the terrible mess that Minix was back in 1991, when the
>>> license permitted people to share patches but not code with
>>> the patches applied. Here you have a technical limit instead
>>> of a legal one, but I expect that the result is not much different.
>>
> I got that. The fundamental problem is the patch collection.
> There is a problem even if you can distribute the result.
> Patches need to be applied. If you do that, and distribute
> a blob, then we're back to the blob problem. If you don't do
> that, then we have the Minix problem.

I don't actually disagree with that. Smalltalk is an excellent  
personal computing environment (well, you would expect that from the  
guys who largely invented personal computing). It does not fare nearly  
as well for distributed, collaborative development (although the  
Squeak community has developed work-arounds, like Monticello, a nice  
distributed SCM).

But: Why should these shortcomings in development style be a reason to  
not include it in a Linux distribution? It's not like if every other  
app is well-coded or well-maintained.

- Bert -