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Re: Flame against non-free burning, time to think.



On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 11:17:30PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 11:36:23PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > > > 2)  it has slowly been trending down.  (with a bubble up in sid)
> > > > 115 < 227 < 298 < 307
> > > 298 > 293 > 272
> 
> Isn't it fun ignoring the figures that don't match your prejudices?

I haven't prejudged anything.  I'm interpreting the numbers as best I
can.  More data would be welcome.  Do we know what the counts for
unstable packages in non-free were at the time of release of slink,
potato, and woody?

> > These numbers point up two problems with opposition to the GR:
> > 1) What good are non-free packages doing our users if an ever-increasing
> > proportion of them are only available in unstable?
> 
> That remark doesn't have any supporting evidence.

There are more non-free packages in unstable now than there have ever
been in any release.  It is, at the very least, suggestive.

What is your alternative explanation of the figures?

> > 2) The "bubble up in sid" indicates people's growing interest in
> > *maintaining* non-free packages, if nothing else.
> 
> Uh, it's a 5% increase, compared to a 20% increase in contrib and a 15%
> increase in main. This soon after woody's release -- and given it's in
> direct contradiction of a multi year trend since early 1999 -- that's
> closer to "experimental error" than "underlying trend". Unless you have
> some supporting data you'd care to share, of course?

I've been compiling a list of non-free ITPs since January 1st, 2002.
There appears to have been a distinct upward trend in the past six
months.  I haven't finished January--March yet (I've been working
backwards).

> In any event, if more people really are interested in maintaining non-free
> packages, that's an argument to keep non-free around rather than have
> them waste their time setting up alternative infrastructure. The question
> here isn't simply one of mechanism -- "do we drop non-free now, or let
> it die?".

Where is the evidence that it will "die" at all?  It's been growing.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |      We either learn from history or,
Debian GNU/Linux                   |      uh, well, something bad will
branden@debian.org                 |      happen.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |      -- Bob Church

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