Re: "keep non-free" proposal
On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 09:21:43PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
>
> > Because i believe the time of confrontation has not yet come, and that
> > the moment to remove non-free from the debian infrastructure (see how
> > heavy this construction is over the simpler from debian, which you
> > choose to misunderstood). There is no alternative to non-free hardware
> > today, so there is not really much we can do about this. But all the
> > rest of the non-free software, by all means, get ride of it.
>
> Does this mean that you would support the removal of all of non-free
> with the exception of those packages necessary to support closed
> hardware?
Well, there is also the problematic question of documentation. It pains
me to see that i was forced to remove the ocaml-doc package from the
debian distribution and into non-free, while at the same time loads of
non-free documentation still stands in main. So, i would oppose the
removal of non-free documentation until this whole mess is cleared, not
before a few month as i have been lead to understand.
Also, a non-free documentation for a free package should be taken
special consideration for, as it enhance the use of free packages, and
well, documentation is more akin to books and other written documents
than software, and furthermore, it could as well be free software, as
upto now, upstream has added every modification i asked them to include.
Also, i believe that maybe in the case of documentation, you could
consider that an unmodifiable document plus an errata document or
whatever would be considered as a pristine orig tarball plus patch or
something such, i don't really know, it is a difficult thing.
Also, if we were going to take a move to remove those non-free packages,
i would hope that it would be over a long enough time to let us have the
time needed to either get upstream to change their mind over it, or find
other solutions.
As of other non-free stuff, well i need lha as i often receive lha
compressed documents profesionally, but i believe a free alternative may
be possible. I have even started looking a bit, but i don't really care
enough for it. Then there is a spattering of non-free games and game
data i used to test 3D graphics, but again i believe they are not really
all that important, just convenient to have there.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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