> If you actually want the level of purity-over-practicality that your mail suggests ... that is effectively an abuse of our users
*Just pointing out the fact that at the time of 11.6.0 you didn't have a problem releasing both free and non-free version.*
Important part ^
Also, it feels like in your reply you're trying to hide or obfuscate this fact, probably because if this fact is not mentioned, your reasoning starts to work (e.g. I quote: "that is
effectively an abuse of our users").
You've provided more questionable reasoning in your previous emails, responding to which I find grossly counterproductive.
Just for the record, let me explain you what I mean exactly, because it might not have penetrated.
What I did - is read the DFSG, and IMO it follows from this document that you should have at least one official release that doesn't have closed-source, just as you did at the time of 11.6.0.
And let me break it down for you, the way I'm reading it:
2. This, in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Debian.
3. and guideline #2 is: Inclusion of source code.
IMO a natural conclusion from this guideline is that if you get a release of Debian, it should be all open source software.
Your reply to that was: "The non-free firmware is still not part of Debian proper, we just happen to distribute it alongside Debian".
And that's fine if you happen to distribute anything alongside whatever you want, and you're not called Official Debian.
The only problem with that is for some reason now you still call those releases "Official distributions" and don't provide pure free software releases anymore.
(Memo: earlier releases with non-free software were called "Unofficial").
But honestly, call them what you want, as long as you provide a pure free software release, just like you should, judging from your own manifesto.
You might have stronger reasons than those you've officially acknowledged to compromise your releases with code that you can't vouch for and you can deny knowledge of what it does exactly; but the way I see it - that's your issue and I'm not going to speculate or blame.
Maybe at some point somebody more responsible will restart proper releases in accordance with DFSG, I'll keep my hope for that.
And given the quality of your demonstrated argument and reasoning I intend to discontinue my participation in this thread, for the purpose of saving my time for more productive activities.
Again, thank you for 11.6.0 and earlier releases.
Regards, John.