On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 06:06:17PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 04:56:23PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> > We have proven to the world that a free operating system can compete
> > with the best proprietary operating systems.
> > Now let us prove to the world that this operating system can stand up on
> > its own, without the crutch of non-free.
> And this is an important point.
> I believe that Debian can be the world's first large-scale Free-only
> operating system project. Not only that, but I believe that by doing
> this, Debian will improve itself and others.
> We will no longer provide free worldwide distribution for software we
> consider licensed unethically. We will no longer be a crutch for those
> that seek to prosper from our lack of ethical courage.
Well, that's nice. How would it be different to just providing main? How
would it be less of a crutch to have developers and users routinely
using software external to Debian from this new archive that is so
often hypothesised?
This is one of the reasons why it's important to work out the plan for
significant changes fairly fully *before* implementing them. There are many
things that you *can't* have both ways: so you're either not going to have
people using non-free stuff with Debian easily, or else you're going to have
Debian continue to have a widely used non-free crutch.
In addition, I don't see how you can reasonably claim that "we" consider
non-free software to have been licensed unethically; I certainly don't,
and the fact that Debian distributes it at all tends to indicate that
Debian as a whole has not had any ethical problems. Personally, and I'm
happy for other developers who hold different opinions, I don't think
licensing software is an ethical issue at all; although being deceitful
about it -- like requiring users to agree to things that have no legal
force, or not being clear about the terms up front, or having the software
damage your system in order to protect itself, or spy on your activities
without informing you before you install it -- is certainly unethical,
and many of the things people like to do in their licenses -- like limit
reviews, or the number of backups you can make -- seem counterproductive
at best.
> It should be apparent that the cause of Free Software is not advanced by
> promoting and supporting non-free.
It's no such thing. There are at least three ways in which the converse
is the case:
* non-free allows us to establish an upstream/downstream relationship
with authors of non-free software, which we can use to encourage
authors to license their software more freely
* making non-free software easily available as an add-on to a fully free
distribution allows people who would like to remain fully free but can't
to control and minimise the amount of non-free software they use
* making non-free software easily available as an add-on to the best
possible fully free distribution allows people who don't care about
fully free software to see the difference in support that it's
possible to offer for software due to different licensing regimes,
which in turn encourages people to prefer fully free software
You're welcome to argue that, on balance, the Cause is better served by
dropping non-free, but arguing that it's in no way advanced by non-free
is patently untrue.
> We have already seen the motivating
> effects that we can achieve simply by putting a piece of software in the
> non-free part of our archive. Imagine, then, how much greator those
> effects would be by completely banning that software from our project
> until it gets a Free license!
How about you provide some evidence for thinking it'd be greater,
rather than just asking us to imagine it? Personally, I think it'd be
marginally worse, since we have less opportunity to build a relationship
with upstream.
> More importantly, we will finally show that it is possible to build a
> world-class operating system from only Free components.
Why do you think that Debian main doesn't already demonstrate that?
> Let us now also consider the plight of our users, whom we also list as a
> priority.
Actually, we list them first of our two priorities.
> These restrictions are not good for users.
And personally, I'd rather let our users and developers decide what's
good for them on an individual basis. If they don't think non-free's
good on balance, it's simple to choose not to work on it.
> I submit that the best possible long-term outcome for our users is one
> in which non-free software ceases to play any part in their lives.
I can't imagine why you'd think anyone in Debian would disagree with that
statement, or would need it "submitted" to them.
> What's more, it shows that there will always be some piece of non-free
> software that someone finds vital. We will never find a point where
> this is not the case.
Then we need to work out a better way of achieving our best possible
long-term outcome.
> We have to bite the bullet sometime, and now is a great time to do that.
We don't actually have to "bite the bullet" on this ever.
> I have also said that I believe all operating systems suck. I still do.
> Debian sucks also, though I like to say it sucks less. I want Debian to
> be the first operating system that I can truly say "does not suck."
Then drop non-free from your sources.list, if you think that's all it takes.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we can.
http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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