Re: The "Free" vs. "Non-Free" issue

[Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>]

>      We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software
>      community. We will place their interests first in our
>      priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation
>      in many different kinds of computing environment.
> 
>      We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs
>      that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We
>      have created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive
>      for this software.

Perhaps my command of English is shaky, but I notice more than one tense
in this context of yours.  Note that "We will be guided" is a promise.
Note that "We have created" is purely informational, and not some
promise we made that needs to be weaseled out of.

> 	You may think that the promise inherent is the social contract
>  is not stated strongly enough and that we can, umm, weasel out of it,
>  but I think that is not quite acting in good faith.

I don't think that laboring under the delusion that non-free is not a
disgrace helps to place the interests of users first in our priorities.

You may not remember this, but long ago we used to use PGP and
non-free ssh as part of our Debian work.  The netscape packages were
quite well cared-for.  The quality of non-free was on par with our free
software.

I encourage you to try this experiment.  Upload all future
angband packages built for m68k only.  Then observe the following
details: how long it takes for someone to upload an i386 deb; how often
the i386 deb is built incorrectly; how often the i386 deb doesn't work
at all; how many user complaints and bug reports you receive about the
package being out of date because the users are only checking the i386
version; how many user complaints and bug reports you receive regarding
the non-functionality of the i386 deb; and so on.

Then, while you're reflecting on what a good job we're doing living up
to these promises you think we've made, imagine that SPI hadn't been too
cowardly to accept a free hosting offer in a non-WIPO country; that we
had set up a non-wipo.debian.org there; that we had moved non-free,
non-us, and all manner of patent-encumbered software there; that we
autobuilt all packages there for every architecture; and that users were
impressed by the quality of this archive.

Then wonder why no jabbering reactionaries are up in arms about non-free
not living up to its potential.