Re: non-free software

[Alex Yukhimets <aqy6633@acf5.nyu.edu>]

> 	It           is            not.

Hi.

I am well aware of that. I didn't mean to pusuade anyone to consider
non-free section as a part of Debian. I remember a long discussion on
where we should draw the line between contrib and non-free, Bruce's
"blackmailing" by promising not to include "contrib" into official
CD and thus making many of us agree that contrib should be DFSG-compliant,
just to make Bruce to include as much as possible into it...
Even more, I do agree that current division is much cleaner and I would
vote for it now. I didn't try to change anything.

But I am amaised by the fact I expressed in my post. Nothing more.
(Somehow listening to RMS made me even stronger opponent of his.
I was deeply touched by one one his friends shouting "This is a war!
This is a war!" several times in regards to GPL'd software and the rest
of the world)

> 	If you bleed so profusely for the common man (though I think
>  the common man is served well  enough by Debian), why do I not see
>  you starting a commercial distribution based on Debian? We encourage
>  people to do that. Why is this always met with a deafening silence?

Now *this* is a serious question. The fact is that in addition to usual
excuses - like having no time, etc. there is one more reason: Debian is
very hard to base a commercial distribution on. In our attempt to make
Debian upgradable we change the scheme of dependencies quite frequently,
taking into account only existing debian packages and not providing any
"hooks" for add-ons. I had  a chance to think about it during the
discussion of a Vitamin-D (remember?). I thing that it is the main reason
the there is no (at least I am not aware of) Debian-based commercial
distribution. 

Thanks.

Alex Y.
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