Re: General Resolution: Handling of the non-free section: proposedBallot
On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 01:54:23AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
>
> > I will most assuredly consider doing that. And i maintain one of the
> > most non-free packages that can be. One of the seven or so binary-only
> > kernel modules, which is a thing _i_ consider evil, and a threat to all
> > what debian represents in the long run. And if you think about it, you
> > will also see why.
>
> Can you describe what energy you have put into finding a free
> replacement?
First, let me tell you what energy i have put in making the current
package as free as it is. I had this pci soft-ADSL modem, i wanted to
use the driver, but there was no licence info at all. I contacted
upstream, discussed with them, even to the guy above the driver writer.
I even was on the phone with them (on my cost) about this issue.
I managed for them to release the wrapper they had around this softADSL
library under the GPL (+ exception for the softADSL library) as well as
their userland tools. I also (shortly though) investigated about a
replacement such library, and i was told that this doesn't exist, and
that only a handful of people worldwide know enough about this to write
such a replacement library, and they probably work for the the big telco
companies, and are not in a position to write a free replacement. Things
may change in the future though, we will see, and i am regularly coming
back to my upstream about this, not in a always rapid way, but pointing
to them the limitations of the current approach (and asking a powerpc
build of the soft-ADSL library). To mention, it is not my upstream's
fault, they don't have access to the source code themself, it is an
Alcatel owned library, and they can't really do something about this. I
didn't approach alcatel about it though.
I also believe that this interaction with them, even if it hadn't
managed to make them free the code, altough they would gladly have, show
a good relationship with them, and paint debian in a good light, and i
hope may make them think in the future when decisions such as this may
be taken.
On another side, i maintain the ocaml package, which was non-free a few
years ago, and i believe that my intervention with upstream was one of
the cause of this (gradual) change. There were other factors, but the
fact that most of the ocaml users and even many of the ocaml team use
debian as its distribution of choice was also an influencing factor.
This would not have been the case if ocaml was not packaged in non-free
back then, i believe. Now, the ocaml-doc packages are non-free, but i
believe that this may also change in the future. Though, this is a more
problematic situation, having to do with copyright of written material
and such, and clearly the current position of non-free docs in main
doesn't give me a good point to force the issue now, i have let it be.
Also, another such package i care about, ocaml-books, is a electronic
version, in both french and english, of a Oreilly published book. And
even if i was not the main person behind this discussion, i followed it.
Also, it was Oreilly, which sponsored the Oslo debconf, did it not, who
refused to free the licence, as i remember.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
Reply to: