Re: [XBoard-devel] installer

[Arun Persaud]

Hi

> Indeed, we could accompany a winboard.exe with a clear warning:
> "please don't download this, because it is almost certainly not what you
> want."
> 
> But why put it there at all, then? We don't supply XBoard binaries, do we?

I thought Eric had a good point there... winboard.exe will run on all
windows computer, whereas for xboard we would have to provide binaries
for all kind of different architectures.

> The only reason to supply a binary WinBoard distribution is that WinBoard
> users in general are not able to handle anything else than an
> out-of-the-box package.

Seems like there might be some people who would like just the bare
binary... Eric for example, but then again, he wouldn't have a problem
compiling it for himself... but we could provide the bare binaries for
"experienced user" who could also compile it for themself

> If we are not allowed to give them that, there is no reason to
> start supplying other things that also do not solve their problem.
> "Are you a vegetarian, sir? No problem, we also have turkey on the menu!"

It's not that we are not allowed to provide installers, we just can't
include non-free software in it... and in our case those are the
timeseal programs. So we could generate an installer for example without
these for people who are not interested to play online and we would be
fine... a while ago we were talking about having different installer
packages (e.g. gold pack vs. normal installer), so we could do something
like that (e.g. free-software-only vs. gold-pack)... we just need to
make sure we provide these packages in a way that people will be able to
get the right package they want without any problems. Doesn't sound
unsolvable to me...

ARUN