Alex Owen wrote:
> 
>
> 
>> Remember the Pine saga. Pine was ditched by all the main distros, yet 
>> had a big following in HEP.
>> Your point about having an 'extras' repository with HEP specific 
>> packages, e.g Cernlibs, pine etc. would take care of that of course.
> 
> Oh yes... of course pine was "ditched" because it was illeagal to 
> distrubute as I recall (which seems like a good reason to me)... so even 

Alex, I was being a bit sloppy in my language. Yes, I'm aware it was a 
licensing problem. But you have to have sympathy for the IT people at 
labs who must have got LOTS of pressure against taking away a package 
researchers have used for years.
And yes, as an (ex) high energy physicist I know what sort of fur could 
fly here.