What do you win by moving things to non-free?
On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 09:07:58AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 12:18:45AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 09:33:00PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > > Cool. Didn't know that. Then again, I've only been using MySQL since a
> > > few years, so maybe it's normal that I didn't know.
> >
> > Which documentation did you use?
> >
> > If you say "none ever" you won.
> >
> > But if you used non-free documentation (in digital or printed form)
> > imagine you wouldn't have been able to use any of this documentation.
>
> Probably not so lovely. But why can people only use documentation if it's
> in Debian main? I've been getting along fine only using the non-free MySQL
> manuals for quite some time: my brain has not exploded, and my wang hasn't
> shrivelled up. If you have a point, I think you may need to make it more
> obvious what it is, because I'm totally failing to see what it is in your
> messages.
Let me try to explain it:
We agree that there's several software where not DFSG-free
documentation [1] is required for many usages of the software.
If I e.g. want to know what gcc option is best for my CPU, I'd currently
use a "man gcc" or "info gcc".
Currently, this works and this documentation is shipped with gcc. But
post-sarge this documentation will move to non-free.
Unless I want to search and use the upstream documentation locations of
every affected software I use, I have to add non-free to my sources.list
and take care that I install the now separate documentation packages for
all software I use.
The second point might only be a minor nuisance for me, but the first
one will tell me that Debian would be much less usable if I wouldn't use
non-free.
Is this wanted?
Now that there are usable free alternatives for Netscape and Acroread
the need for users to use non-free was more and more decreasing.
With the documentation and even more the firmware issues [2] you force
users to use non-free and force distributors to ship both a Debian
installer that includes non-free parts and an extra CD containing parts
of non-free or Debian will be much less usable or even uninstallable for
many users.
There are three main points:
The Debian Social Contract sets users as a priority equally to free
software. I don't see in this discussions about "nearly DFSG-free" [3]
things the requirements of your users discussed. Even if the goal is
clear, there might be better ways than the "remove this and that today
and care about the users later" that is currently done.
And teaching people that in many cases non-free is a required component
for them doesn't help free software. Today, you can tell a user that
it's bad to install the binary-only nvidia drivers because they are in
non-free - but if this user has already had to install the drivers for
his network card and his SCSI adapter from non-free, the nvidia drivers
will seem to be only one more package from non-free and the user will
already have learned that it's quite common that important things are in
non-free.
Debian had a good reputation for caring about licence issues. Qt
becoming GPL-licenced is one example where the Debian position had some
influence on improvements. If Debian continues to get much "Debian
anyway considers everything non-free" reputation for being more
fundamentalistic than even RMS, less external people will seriously
consider comments of Debian on licence problems.
What do you win by moving things to non-free?
> - Matt
cu
Adrian
[1] digitally or printed
[2] one funny thing about the firmware issue is that although Debian
developers have spent many MB of emails on this issue, it still
takes only five minutes to find a dozen firmware images still
present in the kernel sources shipped today in both sarge and sid...
[3] "nearly DFSG-free": this is not about Acroread or the nvidia modules
that are obviously not DFSG-free - but e.g. a document with a small
invariant section is not that far away from the DFSG
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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