Re: Having a non-free and a non-cd branch?
Hi,
>>"Kevin" == Kevin Atkinson <kevina@clark.net> writes:
Kevin> Sorry, I didn't mean to say non-GPL. Want I mean to say is
Kevin> that I think companies should be rewarded for distributing
Kevin> there programs freely even if they are not complete free by
Kevin> debian's standard.
Sorry. Either they are free, by our standards, or they are
not. We have a well defined stance on this subject. That stance is
encapsulated in the DFSG. We ``reward'' people who follow the
licances acceptable in teh DFSG. Anything not in the DFSG is only
reluctantly supoported by Debian.
If you think companies should be rewarded for efforts that do
not meet Debian's criteria; that is your right. Please feel free to
reward them as you see fit.
Debian, on the other hand, has taken a stance on this
issue. I, for one, am unlikely to change (I think we are not quite
conservative enough on the freedom of software issue; I personally
would like to see the DFSG made tighter; Alex is one who would
advocate the DFSG be made looser).
You are asking a bunch of people putting a lot of blood,
sweat, and tears in a project; working without monetary recompence;
to forgo the one thing that holds us together -- our belief in a
community of people committed to freedom of software.
I for one think I am more inclined to agree with RMS when he
talks about the isidious evil of proprietary software that
divides the community against itself.
The peole who work on Debian voted on the DFSG. With that
vote, we effectively said we believed in the philosophy the DFSG
espouses. I hope you do not have a problem with that.
>> KDE is in Debian's "contrib." section. It's not in "non-free". "contrib."
>> section is distributed in our official CDs.
Kevin> And it is in the contrib. section because it relays on
Kevin> non-free software... Thus it can never officially itergrated
Kevin> into debian because of the Qt library KDE uses. I think that
Kevin> that is a shame.
Then work on troll tech to release qt under a dfsg compliant
licence. Or work on the KDE folks to use something else besides QT.
BTW, I quite agree with you when you say it is a shame. KDE
should never have used a non-free library. It is not too late for
them to change now (though I would not be rude enough to say this
on the KDE list; snce the decision is indeed theirs).
manoj
--
If you don't watch it, you're going to catch something.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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