On Sun, Nov 10, 2002 at 10:04:56PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes: > > You do realise that Debian *is* associated with them at the moment though, > > right, and will continue to be until a GR is passed to change that? > Yes, of course I realize that. But if the line between what is in > Debian and what is not is as confusing and difficult to navigate as > you suggest, with there being "Debian packages" on Debian's servers, > but which are "not part of Debian", this all seems like an elaborate > fiction. Personally, I don't find it complicated at all. The "Debian GNU/Linux distribution", which is what the social contract says will be "entirely free software" is debian/dists/woody/main/* and contains only free software. The Debian project, which is the "we" who the social contract says "have created `contrib' and `non-free' areas in our FTP archive for this software', maintains and distributes all the software under debian/ which does include some non-free software, and some free software that requires non-free software. The social contract happens to abbreviate "The Debian GNU/Linux distribution" as "Debian", when you come along and abbreviate "The Debian project" as Debian too, things become confusing. So, obviously, you shouldn't do that. If you're worried about the confusion in the use of phrases like "Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software", then the obvious fix is to clarify the ambiguity. If you want the Debian project to have nothing to do with non-free software, then you should stop confusing the issue -- and presumably yourself -- by focussing on ambiguities. If you're not going to follow that advice, for consistency's sake, you probably should note that according to the first point of the social contract also says "we will never make the system depend on an item of non-free software"; so if you're wanting to treat that point as applying to _everything_ Debian distributes, you should probably be arguing contrib should be dropped too. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.''
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