Hmm…
I’ve been a big fan of the package management system in Debian ever since began using it. It’s the most complete and carefully maintained system I’ve seen for this.
But apart from their package management system, Debian is also famous (or should we say infamous :-) for their strict demands on the licensees of the programs in the distribution: They will only distribute programs that are truly free. I was reminded of this today when I tried to compile the dADS report with LaTeX — it complained about missing files. I discovered that they had removed several LaTeX packages because the files weren’t licensed properly!
They have removed these files: algorithm.sty, algorithmic.sty,
beton.sty, booktabs.sty, caption.sty, euler.sty, footbib.sty,
fvrb-ex.sty, picinpar.sty.
I’m actually using 6 of these packages/files at the moment, so that was kind of
bad for the document :-) But it only took a couple of minutes to download
them again from CTAN. I’ve now placed the packages
in my own texmf-tree in my home directory so that they’ll be preserved
next time the good guys at Debian decides to
change something.
