On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 13:31, Marek Habersack wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 01:22:01PM -0500, Joe Wreschnig scribbled:
> > On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 12:43, Marek Habersack wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 12:32:10PM -0300, Humberto Massa scribbled:
> > > > 1. IANADD (wannabe yet) but what makes me be a Debian user since slink
> > > > is the Debian SC punchline: Free Software. Free as in RMS-free, as in
> > > > DFSG-free, as in speech. I don't want, don't need no stinking
> > > > AutoCAD.
> > > You've got the right to. I've got the right not to support RMS's views.
> > > We're not a monastery, we're not monks who swear to obey the same rules and
> > > have the same views on the religious matters.
> >
> > See, though, that's the thing. None of us sweared to agree with RMSs
> > views. However, we *did* promise to follow the Social Contract and DFSG,
> > *at the very least* in regards to our work on Debian. And now you're
> > saying that doing so is "nit-picking".
> Yes, it is. Since I didn't break the SC nor the DFSG anywhere.
> And yet you
> are accusing me of doing it. The people responsible for removing the tg
> driver broke the SC - why don't you go and lecture them instead?
Because he is not a member of the project anymore? And even when he was,
he didn't encourage flagrant DFSG violations. To quote your original
mail again,
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01803.html
> If somebody comes and says "the tg driver is bad, because
> it is non free and I will remove it" and offers no alternative then, in my
> book, that person loses _all_ the credibility as a software developer and
> a person that can be trusted to do some task which requires responsibility.
If someone says "I intend to uphold the Debian Social Contract and abide
by the DFSG in my Debian work", and then refuses to remove non-free
stuff from main because there's no free alternative, I consider that a
serious loss of credibility; the person is not living up to what they
promised to do.
> As far as I am concerned, the firmware uploaded to a device by a (free)
> driver is not software from the host system point of view (and from its
> user's point of view), it's just data. Therefore, removing the entire driver
> based on the notion that it was non-free was entirely wrong (and it broke
> the SC).
The person who completely removed the tg3 driver actually shared your
point of view, IIRC. Some people, like Herbert and apparently also
Marco, find removing the whole driver a better solution. (In Herbert's
case, I understand his reasoning, he didn't want to support such a big
variation from upstream). I personally think GOTO Masanori's patch
should have been applied.
But realize that by this logic ("just data"), I can upload any m68k
program to the x86 archive, because it's not really software. Does that
make sense?
--
Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
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