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in faq.html, add minor punctuation and wording fixes, and update various

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sections to account for Alpine


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David Lawrence Ramsey 2007-12-09 18:28:36 +00:00
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ChangeLog
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2007-12-09 David Lawrence Ramsey <pooka109@gmail.com>
* faq.html: Add minor punctuation and wording fixes, and update
various sections to account for Alpine.
2007-12-08 David Lawrence Ramsey <pooka109@gmail.com>
* prompt.c (do_statusbar_mouse, reset_statusbar_cursor,

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doc/faq.html
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<h2><a href="#6">6. Advocacy and Licensing</a></h2>
<blockquote><p><a href="#6.1">6.1. Why should I use nano instead of Pico?</a><br>
<a href="#6.2">6.2. Why should I use Pico instead of nano?</a><br>
<a href="#6.3">6.3. What is so bad about the Pine license?</a><br>
<a href="#6.4">6.4. Okay, well what mail program should I use then?</a><br>
<a href="#6.5">6.5. Why doesn't UW simply change their license?</a><br>
<a href="#6.6">6.6. What if tomorrow UW changes the license to be truly Free Software?</a></p></blockquote>
<a href="#6.3">6.3. What is so bad about the older Pine license?</a><br>
<a href="#6.4">6.4. Okay, well, what mail program should I use then?</a></p></blockquote>
<h2><a href="#7">7. Miscellaneous</a></h2>
<blockquote><p><a href="#7.1">7.1. nano-related mailing lists.</a><br>
<a href="#7.2">7.2. I want to send the development team a big load of cash (or just a thank you).</a><br>
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<p><b>In the beginning...</b></p>
<p>For years Pine was THE program used to read email on a Unix system. The Pico text editor is the portion of the program one would use to compose his or her mail messages. Many beginners to Unix flocked to Pico and Pine because of their well organized, easy to use interfaces. With the proliferation of GNU/Linux in the mid to late 90's, many University students became intimately familiar with the strengths (and weaknesses) of Pine and Pico.</p>
<p><b>Then came Debian...</b></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian GNU/Linux</a> distribution, known for its strict standards in distributing truly &quot;free&quot; software (i.e. software with no restrictions on redistribution), would not include a binary package for Pine or Pico. Many people had a serious dilemma: they loved these programs, but they were not truly free software in the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">GNU</a> sense of the word.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian GNU/Linux</a> distribution, known for its strict standards in distributing truly &quot;free&quot; software (i.e. software with no restrictions on redistribution), would not include a binary package for Pine or Pico. Many people had a serious dilemma: they loved these programs, but the versions available at the time were not truly free software in the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">GNU</a> sense of the word.</p>
<p><b>The event...</b></p>
<p>It was in late 1999 when Chris Allegretta (our hero) was yet again complaining to himself about the less-than-perfect license Pico was distributed under, the 1000 makefiles that came with it and how just a few small improvements could make it the Best Editor in the World (TM). Having been a convert from Slackware to Debian, he missed having a simple binary package that included Pine and Pico, and had grown tired of downloading them himself.</p>
<p>Finally something snapped inside and Chris coded and hacked like a madman for many hours straight one weekend to make a (barely usable) Pico clone, at the time called TIP (Tip Isn't Pico). The program could not be invoked without a filename, could not save files, had no help text display, spell checker, and so forth. But over time it improved, and with the help of a few great coders it matured to the (hopefully) stable state it is today.</p>
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<hr width="100%">
<h1><a name="6"></a>6. Advocacy and Licensing</h1>
<h2><a name="6.1"></a>6.1. Why should I use nano instead of Pico?</h2>
<blockquote><p>There are many reasons to use nano instead of Pico, a more complete list can be found at the <a href="http://www.nano-editor.org/">nano homepage</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>There are many reasons to use nano instead of Pico. A more complete list can be found at the <a href="http://www.nano-editor.org/">nano homepage</a>.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="6.2"></a>6.2. Why should I use Pico instead of nano?</h2>
<blockquote><p>Again, check out the <a href="http://www.nano-editor.org/">nano homepage</a> for a good summary of reasons. It really is a matter of personal preference as to which editor you should use. If you're the type of person who likes using the original version of a program, then Pico is the editor for you. If you're looking for a few more features and a 'better' license as far as adding your own changes (sacrificing mailer integration with Pine), nano is the way to go.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="6.3"></a>6.3. What is so bad about the Pine license?</h2>
<blockquote><p>The U of W license for Pine and Pico is not considered truly Free Software according to both the Free Software Foundation and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines">Debian Free Software Guidelines</a>. The main problem regards the limitations on distributing derived works: according to UW, you can distribute their software, and you can modify it, but you can not do both, i.e. distribute modified binaries.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="6.4"></a>6.4. Okay, well what mail program should I use then?</h2>
<blockquote><p>If you are looking to use a Free Software program similar to Pine and emacs is not your thing, you should definitely take a look at <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a>. It is a full-screen, console based mail program that actually has a lot more flexibility than Pine, but has a keymap included in the distribution that allows you to use the same keystrokes as Pine would to send and receive mail. It's also licensed under the GPL.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="6.5"></a>6.5. Why doesn't UW simply change their license?</h2>
<blockquote><p>You're really not asking the right person here. I (Chris) waited a long time to see if UW would change their license because of the amount of high quality software being released and developed under the GPL without being taken advantage of by malicious corporate entities or other baddies, but no such luck so far.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="6.6"></a>6.6. What if tomorrow UW changes the license to be truly Free Software?</h2>
<blockquote><p>Honestly nothing would make me happier than to see that happen. nano would continue to be developed independently until such time as Pico had all the features nano did or the projects merged. That just does not seem very likely given that there has been no sign of any changes in the past few years in a positive direction.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Again, check out the <a href="http://www.nano-editor.org/">nano homepage</a> for a good summary of reasons. It really is a matter of personal preference as to which editor you should use. If you're the type of person who likes using the original version of a program, then Pico is the editor for you. If you don't mind sacrificing mailer integration with Pine, and are looking for a few more features, as well as a 'better' license in terms of adding your own changes, nano is the way to go.</p><p>Note that the last of these no longer applies to the new version of Pine, <a href="http://www.washington.edu/alpine/">Alpine</a>, which is under the Apache License, version 2.0.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="6.3"></a>6.3. What is so bad about the older Pine license?</h2>
<blockquote><p>The U of W license for older versions of Pine and Pico is not considered truly Free Software according to both the Free Software Foundation and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines">Debian Free Software Guidelines</a>. The main problem regards the limitations on distributing derived works: according to UW, you can distribute their software, and you can modify it, but you can not do both, i.e. distribute modified binaries.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="6.4"></a>6.4. Okay, well, what mail program should I use then?</h2>
<blockquote><p>If you are looking to use a Free Software program similar to Pine, and Emacs is not your thing, you should definitely take a look at <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a>. It is a full-screen, console based mail program that actually has a lot more flexibility than Pine, but has a keymap included in the distribution that allows you to use the same keystrokes as Pine would to send and receive mail. It's also under the GNU General Public License, version 2.0.</p></blockquote>
<hr width="100%">
<h1><a name="7"></a>7. Miscellaneous</h1>
<h2><a name="7.1"></a>7.1. nano-related mailing lists.</h2>
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<h2><a name="7.5"></a>7.5. Can I have CVS write access?</h2>
<blockquote><p>Re-read Section <a href="#7.4">7.4</a> and you should know the answer.</p></blockquote>
<h2><a name="8"></a>8. ChangeLog</h2>
<blockquote><p>2007/08/26 - Update links to the Free Translation Project. (DLR)<br>
<blockquote><p>2007/12/09 - Add minor punctuation and wording fixes, and update various sections to account for Alpine. (DLR)<br>
2007/08/26 - Update links to the Free Translation Project. (DLR)<br>
2007/07/29 - Update RPM links for nano 2.0.x. (DLR)<br>
2007/04/18 - Add a new section 4.14 to explain how autoindent affects pasted text. (John M. Gabriele, minor tweaks by DLR)<br>
2007/04/04 - Update email address. (DLR)<br>