Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

["Björn Persson" <spam-away@nowhere.nil>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> Please cast a vote on this forum.  This is the time to influence the
> next version of Debian.

Well, I don't really use Debian, at least not for programming, so it's 
up to you whether you want to count this post as a vote.

I want to encourage people to set their software free, but I also want 
to encourage people to write in Ada. Free software is doing rather well 
these days, but Ada is burdened with an undeserved bad reputation. Of 
course a lot of non-free software is still around, but my impression is 
that Ada is in greater need of support than free software is. Therefore, 
when I have to choose between promoting software freedom or promoting 
Ada, I choose Ada. Consequently I would avoid the GPL-only edition. I 
think it will drive people away from Ada rather than driving them 
towards software freedom.

> I'd also like to hear your reasons for using, or not using, Debian.

I have been interested in Debian and installed it twice to try it out, 
but that's about it.

In case my boss wanted to change OSes on our server farm and wanted a 
really stable and reliable distribution, only one thing would keep me 
from suggesting Debian: I haven't been able to find a way to 
automatically verify, by cryptographic signatures, that downloaded 
packages are genuine. That makes automated updating and installation 
seem a bit too risky for my taste.

On my desktop box at home, stability is a tad less important and I often 
want the new features in recent versions of various programs, so there I 
have a second reason.

-- 
Bj�rn Persson                              PGP key A88682FD
                    omb jor ers @sv ge.
                    r o.b n.p son eri nu