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Re: Policy on software used to create desktop theme?



Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> (2016-10-26):
> Hello.  Congratulations on chosing softWaves!  I like the theme, it
> looks very "Debian" to me.
> 
> One aspect of the contribution wiki page [1] sparked my interest.  It
> says Illustrator was used to create the images.  I assume this refers
> to Adobe Illustrator, which to my knowledge is non-free proprietary
> software.
> 
> I see a philosophical problem that the Debian project rely on
> proprietary tools in a highly visible area like the look'n'feel of the
> distribution.  In my eyes this harms the goal of offering a complete
> free software distribution for users.  It is like saying "we create a
> free OS but for real work like creating our desktop theme we rely on
> proprietary software".

Debian relies on contributors. Juliette's contributions are high quality
contributions, placed under Free Licenses. And mind you, this is what Debian
is about (see social contract).

She even went as far as describing why she's using the tools she's using,
and how she discovered our Free Software community (Mini-DebConf Lyon 2015),
including how she was told not to use tools she was efficient with, but to
tools that appeared buggy or counter-intuitive to her instead. And how she
should be taking the time to describe everything suboptimal to the relevant
developers, instead of just doing well what she wants to.

(Great job at welcoming both real life feedback, and at welcoming newcomers
and new contributors, by the way.)

> Does anyone understand my point?  And share the concern?

How do you feel about the hardware she's been using? Should we ban every
contribution built on setups using:
 - non-free fonts
 - non-free 3D drivers
 - non-free firmwares
 - non-free BIOSes
 - non-free EFI implementations

> How do you feel about a requirement that the next Debian deskop theme is
> created using only free software?

Entirely worthless.


KiBi.

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