Re: new port: and the winner is....
On Mon, 24 Sep 2001, Jules Bean wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 05:00:48PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Richard B. Kreckel wrote:
> > > The social contract says "Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software".
> > > Such a win-port might indeed serve some users. But for my own part, I do
> > > have some personal problems with making all free software win-compatible.
> > > Does it serve Free Software? Such ports frequently lead to crippled
> > > design [1] and frankly, I do not like to give people more excuses for not
> > > switching to an entirely free OS.
> >
> > Well, we cannot have Debian that runs over the Microsoft Windows(TM) kernel,
> > since the Windows kernel is an extremely non-free component, and nothing on
> > Debian can have a dependency on non-free *software*. Therefore there will
> > never be a Debian for arch "Windows" (or whatever it gets called).
>
> This view may be a little narrow.
Well, I obviously don't think so...
> Many of the current debian architectures depend on non-free software
> in the bootstrapping process (e.g. BIOSes).
You mean firmware? We consider non-free firmware _shadow_ dependency (i.e.
the firmware needs to be there, but is not manipulated directly by the
package) ok in Debian. Kernels, we do not.
Also, I don't see BIOS and hardware makers playing hard-ball with the Free
software community like Microsoft does. *I* think of it as sleeping with a
bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral enemy in MS Windows case. And if it were
another non-free kernel (like BeOS, QNX...), I'd think of it as simply a
poor allocation of resources.
> And don't forget that before linux, free software was developed on
> non-free OSes most of the time...
The point being? We do not have to waste time with that now, at least not
with the kernel. We still need not to get too trigger happy with hardware
and firmware, but otherwise...
I won't help a Microsoft windows port. I expect a lot of others not to. It
does not mean I'll lose my time trying to block such a port, but I *will*
take time to stop such a port from tainting the Debian name (if someone
pushes for it to become an officially supported port in the archive) UNTIL
there is a DFSG-compliant kernel for it to run on top of.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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