Re: non-DFSG section and CD distributers
On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Paul J Thompson wrote:
> However, there are many software authors out there who put a great
> deal of time and effort into a program because they care about
> the result (and so on, etc etc...). And then, when they release
> it, they attach say perchance one of those "free as long as your
> non-commercial, then you have to ask me (etc, etc)" tags on there
> which we all recognize.
>
> Now, I think it is starting at not-very-nice and proceeding quickly
> into audacious, insulting, and wrong for us to label them as non-free.
> If you think about it, this is lumping there efforts into the same
> category that we put netscape and the like. I don't believe that is
> something we should be doing as a representative -- and I believe we
> are the most direct representative -- of the Linux community.
>
> This is only one side of the negative aspect of our current
> implementation of non-free.
i think you are missing the point entirely.
categorisation of software as either free or non-free according to the DFSG
is *not* a judgement of quality or merit or worthiness or anything else.
it is a simple statement of whether the software in question is free
enough to include in the debian main distribution.
if it is completely free with no 'strings' attached then it can go in
debian main.
if it is free but depends on a non-free program then it can go in
contrib (e.g. kde and the netscape installer package).
if it is non-free then it may be able to go in the non-free section
of debian's ftp archive, depending on whether the license allows that
distribution or not (e.g. we can include qt but not netscape).
RE: your quotation of the Linus interview:
Debian is *NOT* opposed to commercial or non-free software. Our
focus is on free software but that doesn't make us 'against' non-free
programs.
--
craig sanders
networking consultant Available for casual or contract
temporary autonomous zone system administration tasks.
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