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Re: Proposal: Keep non-free



On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 08:19:17AM +0100, Martin Schulze wrote:
> Matt Pavlovich wrote:
> > I have personally negotiated with several hardware vendors including
> > Matrox, Nvidia, and Compaq about making drivers and other support
> > software 100% DFSG compliant.  The success has been mixed, but in every
> > case, they are beginning to "see the light".  
> 
> I'm very glad to read this.

Me too, altough i am a little dubious about this.

> > If we abandon non-free, we are essentially telling Nvidia and other
> > vendors:
> > 
> > "Thank you for taking the time to integrate your software onto our
> > platform, but your efforts are not good enough and we refuse to
> > distribute it."
> 
> As long as it is not Free Software I don't see a problem with this.
> 
> We cannot include it in Debian anyway, since it is non-free.  If Debian
> stops distributing it but people will build ftp.non-free.org, what's
> the different from the users' perspective?  A new apt-line.  Oh horror...

Because most probably, nobody will build ftp.non-free.org. I would be
happy to be proven the contrary though, and once such an alternative
structure is up, and works in an acceptable way, then i would see no
opposition to move non-free to it. But upto now, i have seen only empty
words about it. Is the free software/open source way of doing not : show
the code, and if it is good, let's use it. The same should go in this
case.

Friendly,

Sven Luther



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