[GNU-linux-libre] Recent blacklist additions

[Brett Smith]

Hi everyone,

The launch of the GNU Bucks program has already brought us information
about a couple of programs that accidentally snuck in to some free
distros.  I've added them to the software blacklist page on the
LibrePlanet wiki, and wanted to draw your attention to them.

The first package is mesademos.  Like the name suggests, it's a
collection of demos demonstrating how to use Mesa and OpenGL.  A couple
of the demos (progs/demos/pointblast.c and progs/demos/spriteblast.c)
are nonfree.

The second package is texlive-base-bin.  Most of this package is fine,
of course, but it turns out that it includes a script called
getnonfreefonts, which does exactly what it says.  Thankfully it can
safely be removed, with no ill side effects.

Please check your distributions and make sure you're not shipping these
programs.

While I was adding these entries to the blacklist page, I also took a
little time to clean it up.  Mostly that meant putting all the entries
in the standard info box, but I also adjusted a couple of entries.  One
thing I'd like to ask: please make sure that the freeness of a package
has been discussed on this list and/or with RMS before adding it to the
blacklist.  I think the blacklist makes a great quick reference, but
it's probably not so great for discussing whether or not certain
packages should be added, or keeping notes about "borderline" packages
-- it's a little too easy to miss those nuances and get confused about
what the listing is for.  If keeping that sort of information on the
wiki would also be useful, perhaps we can make a separate page for it?

If you have any questions about any of this, please let me know.  And as
always, thanks again for all the work you do to help support free
software.

Best regards,

-- 
Brett Smith
Licensing Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation