Re: one of the many reasons why removing non-free is a dumb idea
Hi Sven,
On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 10:41:11AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > Quality. Contrib and non-free long been the bastard son of the Debian
> > quality process. Autobuilders do not build non-free, and thus packages
>
> That is only a problem for non-free or contrib packages that are not
> well maintained. So let's kick out of non-free (and contrib) all
> packages of bad quality and be done with it. Probably nobody will
> complain about those anyway, and if they do, they should start fixing
> the quality issues.
That's not true at all. Even packages that are well-maintained can be
of very low quality in non-free, especially if you are not running on
i386. This is due in part to a lack of autobuilders for non-free.
> > this is something that could be improved more *outside* Debian than
> > within it. If we cannot distribute and support software in a quality
> > fashion, we should not do so at all.
>
> I trust debian, i may not trust a random outside source. And then, there
> is the question of the BTS.
But you may trust another source, too. Debian does not have a monopoly
on trust.
Debian also does not have a monopoly on BTS systems. Reportbug is
already aware of this. From /usr/share/doc/reportbug/README.developers:
Packages not distributed by Debian can take advantage of this utility
too.
They just need to add a "send-to" header to the control file
/usr/share/bug/$package/control.
Send-To: bugs.myproject.com
`bug' will add `submit@' `quiet@' or `maintonly@' to form the
address the
bug report mail is send to.
(Note: you probably should use dpkg's support for Origin and
Bugs tags
in lieu of this support.)
> Mmm, if we really would want to be ethical, then we should not
> distribute software that is allowed to be used for commiting non-ethical
> things, mass murder and other such stuff for example. Come to think of
I think it's rather far-fetched to claim that an operating system is
usable as a tool for mass murder.
However, it is true that one could use Debian for good or bad. There
are different ways to evaluate the ethics in such a situation.
Philosophers write volumes upon the topic. One way is utilitarianism,
which I used in my paper Ethics of Free Software [1], written back in
1998.
One definition of utilitarianism is: Everyone ought to act so as to
bring the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of
people. Some modern philosophers throw probability into the mix as
well, so as you evaluate each individual outcome, you also consider the
probability of it occuring.
That is, in abstract, utilitarianism can be thought of roughly as:
ethics = happiness * people * probability
Where, of course, happiness could be positive or negative, and
probability is the likelihood that the specific action you're
investigating will occur.
When we look at Debian, we can readily see the great utility that it has
for so many people. We can also realize that there are instances of
unhappiness caused by Debian, such as spammers or crackers that use our
operating system. Yet, on balance, I think it is pretty obvious that
there has been far more good than ill come from our OS.
> it, we are already bared to distribute our software to some countries.
> Sure, this is a restriction of the US governement, but why should we
> limit our freedom in distributing software because of a governement most
> of its citizen didn't vote for, and who is not recognized by most of the
> debian developers. Because it is convenient to host our debian servers
> on US territory ?
To be sure, this restriction is more of one on paper than one that is
practically enforced; indeed, it is really impossible to enforce, and as
far as I am aware, we do not enforce it. We also maintain mirrors in
countries that do not have those restrictions.
> > Now let us prove to the world that this operating system can stand up on
> > its own, without the crutch of non-free.
>
> It can already, where is the problem.
If that is the case, then there should be no problem with removing
non-free.
> > > there is a huge difference between almost-free software and proprietary
> > > software.
> >
> > If you are a business and almost-free means home or educational use
> > only, that difference is practically non-existant.
>
> Well, this is again an ethical question. If you are a business, and are
> making money of said software, then you can pay whatever you like for
> the non-free stuff if you want to use it, be it a post card, a friendly
> mail, or some real money to support the developer. Or you can contribute
> to developing a free alternative.
Just because you are a business doesn't mean that you have lots of money
to spare. For instance, someone that works part-time from home may not
be in a position to support these things. Also, it is not necessarily
possible to buy rights to non-free software, or it may be prohibitively
expensive; or the original developers may be unreachable.
[1] http://www.complete.org/publications/fsethics/
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