Re: "keep non-free" proposal
Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> writes:
> You keep talking like there's only one possible valid way of looking
> at things -- and that's not beside the point, it's the main obstacle
> preventing us from talking about what the point is.
I'm interested in hearing your way of looking at things, not your
telling me that I won't listen to it. Please, do share it!
> [1] Distribute a great, free operating system.
> [2] Make it as useful as possible
>
> Non-free has nothing to do with [1], and is a crutch for [2] where we
> don't have any better alternatives.
I think that's a decent objective. But we have historically had
things in non-free even when we did have alternatives. Things that go
in main have to meet the DFSG, and the maintainers say-so is not
enough to satisfy that things have. There is independent review, from
the FTP masters and debian-legal about such things.
So I would like to see non-free (if it remains) have a requirement
that things be necessary, or only there in the absence of free
alternatives, or something like that; and I think such a requirement
should be enforced by more than the maintainer's say-so.
> Instead, you're implying that people will feel more pressured by the
> absense of non-free and will therefore they will fix the problems such
> that [2] will cease to be an issue.
No, that's not really what I'm doing. I hope that non-free.org would
exist, and I would hope that the Debian packages now in non-free would
find a home there. I would hope that users learn how to add the right
apt-get line for it, just as they must learn to add non-free now.
I agree with you that the non-free packages need to exist. What I
disagree about is that it must be Debian's job to provide them.
> And, granted, in some cases people might react to pressure positively
> where they would not have otherwise. But, in tossing non-free, you're
> tossing out a fair bit of the flexibility our project has to deal with
> odd licensing problems. And for what?
How do you see this flexibility working now? I think I don't
understand the question, and I would like to be sure I do before I try
to give an answer to it.
Right now, the standards for main and contrib are very rigid and
fairly precise, but we have in practice allowed for some flexibility
around the timing of things (for example, the current lengthy delay in
dealing with the GNU FDL). We have allowed anything whatsoever in
non-free provided we have the legal right to copy it from our server
in a convenient way.
I don't view non-free as a wonderful tool for dealing with "licensing
problems". Indeed, I would guess that we have been hampered by having
upstream people say "well, we shouldn't make it free, after all,
you'll still distribute it". I don't think that helps at all; if my
guess is right, then the flexibility you praise is doing a detriment.
I believe that we need to send the message to upstream authors that we
stand for free software, and it is not our job to help them with
non-free software. Where this is tricky is in helping our *users*
with non-free software; I don't mind doing that nearly as much. But
it is not in the long-term interests of our users to have non-free
software.
I believe our users are better served by having the difference in
licensing be met with a clearly marked difference in the organizations
providing the software. I do not believe our users are well served by
the appearance that Debian is just fine with and happy to distribute
non-free software. If we are going to do it, I believe we should do
it grudgingly, not eagerly, and we should be constantly trying to stop
when we can, and only continuing because we feel we must--and I
believe that decision should be made package-by-package, and should
not depend on just the decision of one maintainer.
But this may not really respond to your question; I could only guess
at just what you were looking for, so if it is not as responsive as
you'd like, then please amplify the question a little or explain in
more detail what the flexibility is that you have, and what about that
flexibility helps our goals.
Thomas
Reply to: