Re: Having a non-free and a non-cd branch?
It seems I haven't done a good job in our RL version of new-maintainer phone
call, Dan ;-). I thought you understood the issues.
Some time around Sat, 27 Jun 1998 20:54:32 EDT,
Dan Jacobowitz wrote:
> Actually, I think there would be merit to this. The problem with
> shipping contrib on CDs is that by definition contrib packages can
> depend on non-free packages - so basically, the CD does not contain
> every package depended on by other packages. We can't always resolve
> that, but where we can, we should.
But we don't want to spend our efforts trying to separate the "cd-ok" packages
only to find out later that whoever did the work did not do it well enough for
us not to get sued. Besides, Debian's first goal is and will always be to
construct a free (DFSG sense) OS. This has been the goal from the beginning,
and it will not change until 99% of current core group (the people who do 99%
of the work) go away. Whenever that happens, Debian will not be the same
anyway.
>
> And as for the only reason to choose Debian being its devotion to free
> software - I disagree. That's _not_ why I chose Debian. I chose
> Debian because I like the infrastructure and I like the way the system
> works. I like the responsiveness to problems. I like, horror of
> horrors, dpkg (at least compared to RPM). Free software is not our
> only distinguishing mark.
You don't have to choose Debian for its commitment to Free Software as a
user. In fact, our goal, in my interpretation, is to have an OS that others
would prefer to non-free alternatives, but it has to be free or it loses
point. As a developer though, you need to understand the importance of free
software, or else we get threads/flame wars like this where developers
(usually newbies) try to make debian change its goals. I hate to tell you,
but it's not happening ;-).
--
Proudly running Debian Linux! Linux vs. Windows is a no-Win situation....
Igor Grobman igor@debian.org igor@igoria.net
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