Re: one of the many reasons why removing non-free is a dumb idea

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 12:00:44PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 11:07:08AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > >  - get a life and stop worrying about what other people run on their
> > > >  own computers.
> > > 
> > > The issue here is not what other people run on their own
> > > computers. The issue is what Debian will and will not distribute.
> > 
> > And what debian developers are allowed to work on inside of debian's
> > infrastructure.
> 
> Care to elaborate? I don't understand that point.

I maintain a non-free package, the unicorn driver, which is really
almost GPLed, except for its dependence on a soft ADSL library where not
even the manufacturer of the hardware has the source for. Notice also
that i had personal phone contact with the hardware manufacturer, and
that they were quite interested, and did even change the licence of the
driver they could change for it to be able to enter non-free. Sadly,
they have no access to the soft ADSL library, and cannot free it
themselves, and i know of no free alternative. Also, i hear that very
few people understand ADSL issues involved here, and this comes in one
of the domain even the FSF admits is not ready for free software (or at
least they did admit before removing the page i read on their site, as i
never was able to find it again).

Anyway, i as debian devel want to be free to use the debian infrastructure
to distribute this driver, and the use of the BTS to communicate with my
users, which find the the package usefull, even if it is not in main.

Now some people want to remove said package from the infrastructure
debian provides for me, and i should use some other infrastructure to
distribute the package, and to handle bugs. This, as has been said, may
well take time from me i would have used for other debian issues, and it
may well cost me personally to set up the infrastructure.

So, the aim of this whole discussion is about what kind of work can be
done inside of debian. These people with their non-free GR, apart from
loosing everyone's time, are trying to impose on me what i can work on
inside of debian, without even bothering to look at the issues in
detail, and answering arguments made against their case. I guess some of
the contributors may not even be debian devels.

Friendly,

Sven Luther