This program was written specifically for Debian by Bill Geddes and
Bdale Garbee in January of 1999.

The effort resulted from a series of discussions with Richard
M. Stallman about the problem posed by the existence of the non-free
tree on many Debian FTP sites to users who wish to run a system of
entirely Free Software.  The goal is to make it easy for a Debian user
to know what non-free software is currently installed on their system so
that they can make conscious decisions about what software to use.

Presently, vrms also shows the user if any packages from the contrib
section is used.

Things that are on our wish list:

	- augment the script to support a "verbose" option, which would display
	  some text from the collected public writings of RMS, et al, helping
	  to explain the issues posed by non-free software.

	- further augment the verbose option to make specific comments about
	  each non-free package... for example, explain the patent issues 
	  surrounding the GIF image format.

	- process dependency information to report what DFSG-compliant package,
	  if any, may have led to the installation of each non-free package.

Feel free to let us know if you have any other good ideas!  The best way to do
so would be to file a wishlist bug against package 'vrms' in the Debian Bug 
Tracking System.

Contributions in form of code are also accepted, if you prefer to give a
prototype of a feature that you would like vrms to have.
