On (16/12/05 08:35), Rogério Brito wrote: > Hi there, people. > > I'm currently one of the maintainers of the "virtual Richard > M. Stallman" package (vrms), whose purpose is to indicate to the user > which packages installed in his system are not Free Software. > > The package had active development up to 2002 and, then, it wasn't given > so much attention. As a user of it, I thought that I could lend it a > hand trying to fix some problems and doing some janitorial work on the > Bug Tracking System (BTS) part of vrms. > > This resulted in some "new life" in the development of vrms [1] and a > move to a team maintainership [2], with the source package being > developed on Debian's Alioth server [3, 4]. > > So, I would like to ask you to, please, install it, use it, suggest what > could be improved (preferrably reporting the bugs to the BTS) and tell > us of any bugs that you encounter. For those not aware of it, you can > report a bug against a package with the use of the nice "reportbug" > program (in the reportbug package). > > I think that the package has huge ways to be improved and, as always, > any help is welcome. > > I firmly believe that the Free Software applications that we have today > are mature enough (and also sufficient) that we can drop most of the use > of non-free packages. > > In the pursuit of this task, I think that vrms is an important > assessment tool, so that the user knows how much non-free software his > system has installed and which Free Software alternatives exist.
I use it and it seems to work well :) It reports that all my servers are running free software and for my laptop: Non-free packages installed on Darius nvidia-kernel-source NVIDIA binary kernel module source 1 non-free packages, 0.2% of 648 installed packages. (nv works well for me and so I've not tried the nvidia driver) I'm at a bit of a loss as to what you're thinking in terms of development; ie. what more one would want it to do unless you're thinking along the lines of recommended free alternatives to proprietary software. I checked out the alioth page and not much has seemed to have happened since August. This is not a criticism; I share your enthusiasm for the using free software wherever possible. I guess I'm suffering from a lack of imagination :) Regards Clive -- www.clivemenzies.co.uk ... ...strategies for business -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
