Re: General Resolution: Handling of the non-free section: proposedBallot
On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 02:41:20PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-03-08 14:24:13 +0000 Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>
> wrote:
>
> >On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 02:16:42PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> >>[...] I think there are other possible ones, but you dismissed them
> >>previously.
> >Hard and possibly illegal.
>
> If you mean reverse-engineering the devices, I think even the
> currently-proposed EU "enforcement directive" about this doesn't make
> it illegal. http://www.ffii.org.uk/ip_enforce/ipred.html
Ah, but i would be barred from entering the US forever after.
> >They would say :
> > why should i care about freing the code, since i can upload those
> > binary only drivers to non-free.org [...]
>
> That seems little different to what they can say about debian.org
> today.
Yeah, but at least the threat to remove their package from non-free
would have some weight.
> Point taken about developer motivations, but it's odd to ignore
> external non-free existing already, but ask the project to act based
And how much of those are you using, and how much of those to you trully
trust in on production hardware ?
> on what might happen to external non-free. Should we vote to keep
> "non-free" because of some concept like "keep your friends close and
> enemies closer"?
No, because i believe it does keep a communication line open to non-free
upstream who could be amenable to changing their licencing, or
considering free choices in the future, without making them used to rely
on an external structure, and ignore us in the future.
Sure, those whose upstream doesn't care, and where the maintainer
doesn't see a hope or is no more interested in maintaining them, those
packages should be removed without pity, but all packages should not be
lumped in the same case.
And then, there is currently packages in non-free who are more free than
packages in main, so ...
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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