Re: Proposal - non-free software removal
On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:42:14 -0200, Klaus Imgrund wrote:
> why do people that don't want non-free .deb's just remove it from
> their sources line?
Amen.
Where is the original of this posting? All I can find on the
debian-user archives is the two responses.
The original proposer makes the point that Debian developers abandon
non-free projects in favor of free projects. I think they would be wise
to remember that the main reason people use Debian because it's useful
and it's easy to maintain. Erm, the two main reasons that they use
Debian is that it's useful and easy to maintain... And the Debian swirl
is pretty. Oh, blast! The three main reasons... (this is starting to
look a lot like the Spanish Inquisition sketch).
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Believe it or not, that previous paragraph had a point. I think that
there are a lot more things that Debian developers should/could be
working on before we start going on some witch hunt because somebody had
the audacity to use a license other than GPL. Correct me if I'm wrong,
but doesn't even the BSD license qualify as "non-free" as far as Debian
is concerned?
I think of packages like a2ps where Debian developers were actually able
to talk upstream developers into changes in the license so that their
packages could be moved into the main section of the archive.
So rather than Debian Developers concentrate on working ONLY on free
projects, they should work on convincing upstream developers of the
benefits of releasing their source under more liberal licenses like the
GPL. That way, we get to keep the already mature software in the
archive, and hopefully we've won a couple of converts to the cause of
free software in the most important sector, the authors.
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Stephen W. Juranich sjuranic@ee.washington.edu
Electrical Engineering http://students.washington.edu/sjuranic
University of Washington http://ssli.ee.washington.edu/ssli
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