Libraries disappearing from compat-libstdc++-296

[Kam Leo]

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Kam Leo <kam.leo <at> gmail.com> writes:
>> First, do not confuse "Free" with "Open". They are not the same.
>
> Indeed, they're not. "Free Software" is the correct term:
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
> And Free Software it's about freedom, not price.

There are "BSD", "GNU", "beer", "public domain", etc. styles of
freedom. When used loosely "Free Software" can also refer to the
"beer" variety. The "beer" variety usually does not provide source
code.

>> Let's not stretch advocacy to ridiculous levels. Open source has
>> limits. It's nice to have the source code. However, the source code
>> does no good if you have the neither the resources and/or the skills
>> to do something with it.
>
> How hard is it to run "make"? Often just recompiling is enough to make the
> software work on a current distribution. And if it does not build, fixing it is
> often not rocket science either.
>
>        Kevin Kofler

Running "make" is the easy part. Fixing becomes difficult when the
kernel, compiler or library goes through a significant change. In that
situation you have to know what changed in order to deal with it.