*BSD News Article 54301


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Ports and Packages
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 1995 04:18:46 -0800
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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To: serges <serges@rocket.cc.umr.edu>

In many cases the reasons are simply legal.  We're not allowed to
redistribute them, but the port versions are more "binary weapons", e.g.
they require the missing piece to be fetched from somewhere other than
us to be real ports, thus neatly side-stepping the issue.  Good examples
of this are kermit and rzsz.  Don't complain to us, yell at the authors
who place such punative restrictions on redistributing their software!
-- 
						Jordan