Hi, On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 10:05:03AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: > On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 03:43:52PM +0100, Emile van Bergen wrote: > > > The debian project has to realise it has users and upstream maintainers > > > as well as the people who create packages. Your GR totally ignores this > > > fact. > > > > Amen. We've /got/ to realise that serving the users is in the end the > > only goal. > > Then you would have us amend the Social Contract: > > 4. Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software Not necessarily, it doesn't conflict with my interpretation of our goals in any way; it represents it quite accurately. However, in the end, software is there only for the humans that use it. Not the other way around. > > I mean, let's not forget that it all started out because people wanted > > other people to have access to good software they could use, improve and > > share, and found existing software licensing too restrictive. Not to be > > Exactly. So what end does it serve, other than to be the "most influential > source" as you say below, to provide non-free? What if we lose 1% of our > users because of it -- maybe we'll gain 5% down the road because we have > better Free Software? Does it matter? I don't think that the Debian Project will automagically provide more free software once we stop distributing a non-free repository alongside Debian. That's a too easily assumed argument in this discussion. The end that /not/ removing non-free serves is that it provides users with software that some Debian Developers and some users consider important and free enough to use and support. If it's useful enough even for some people to spend energy on, who are we to say we aren't willing to lend our infrastructure to allow other users to benefit from that effort, if we don't have to give up work on truly free software to allow it to continue? It's not like developers working on packages in non-free will suddenly stop spending time on packages they use and need themselves and start work on some other packages. Anybody who does plan to do so, should do so by his own choice, and shouldn't need the removal of non-free. We're all grown ups, we can make our own decisions which software we'll use. Of course we believe that people are better off with Free software, but that only applies in general, not for each and every particular situation. I won't even spend a blink of an eye thinking if I should get rid of daemontools or qmail on my system if Debian stops providing it through non-free. Because I find them quite free enough, although I too regret we're not free to distribute binaries. I think that dhe Debian project benefits from non-free because Debian plus non-free is more attractive to people than Debian sans non-free. Of course being attractive is not a goal in itself, but important to realise our goal of serving our users (including ourselves) by giving them Free Software. Because to realise that goal, we need developers, and to get developers, we need enthusiast users, and to get enthusiasts we need newbies, and to get newbies we need to provide enough value as a way to get involved with GNU/Linux that people will consider Debian. The fact that Japanese support for xpdf is available, good speech synthesis, DJB's stuff, all helps in that. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies / Emile van Bergen | emile@e-advies.info tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 | http://www.e-advies.info
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