Re: I am ANGRY with Debian.
Kevin Mark <kevin.mark@verizon.net> writes:
> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 01:56:03AM +0000, Tyler Smith wrote:
>> On 2007-05-31, Kevin Mark <kevin.mark@verizon.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > About a year ago, there was a GR (general resolution) that Debian had
>> > and it said 'GFDL without invariant sections' are DFSG-free while 'GFDL
>> > with invariant sections' is not. Read info on the vote.
>>
>> That's all fine and good, and I've been persuaded to see the Debian
>> perspective on this. However, there would be fewer angry users if the
>> package maintainers put the non-DFSG stuff into non-free _before_ they
>> excised it from main.
>
> The 'free-ness' vote was the primary issue. Those are implementation
> details left to the maintainers. There was no direction given to them,
> so I would guess they did was what I have read that most maintainer do:
> focus on the 'free software' and put any non-free tasks second or lower.
> Although I think that your suggestion would have made things a little
> easier for the users.
If you look at the bug track I sent you'll see that packagers are
being told to remove the free documentation:
Please try to obtain permission from upstream to delete the cover
texts, otherwise you will have to remove the whole manual. :-(
I fully accept the ramifications of Debian's democratic process. But
Debian has made a big mistake here; tearing useful stuff out of
packages because of a political decision without providing an
automatic upgrade is stupid. It *will* lose you users.
Remember also that there are a whole bunch of people who care about
Debian but, because we're not Debian developers, we didn't get to vote
on this issue.
I think this is the same as any democratic system.
The question is: are Debian leaders and developers now going to behave
like most national government politicians and try and crush all
protest under the banner "sorry! you already voted for it"?
Or are they going to accept that doing this is pretty stupid and
driving people away and that another way should be found than the
current package vandalism.
--
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk
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