Re: Having a non-free and a non-cd branch?
On 27 Jun 1998 18:38:55 -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
Item #4 of the Debian social contract:
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community.
We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the
needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing
environment. We won't object to commercial software that is intended to run
on Debian systems, and we'll allow others to create value-added distributions
containing both Debian and commercial software, without any fee from us. To
support these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality,
100% free software, with no legal restrictions that would prevent these kinds
of use.
> licances acceptable in teh DFSG. Anything not in the DFSG is only
> reluctantly supoported by Debian.
"We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different
kinds of computing environment." That does not sound reluctant and to me, a
commercial environment which is using commercial software is a kind of
computing environment.
> 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).
To what end?
> 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.
"We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software
community. We will place their interests first in our priorities."
> 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.
Religious zealotry at its finest, it is also a misguided ideal founded on
a faulty premise and one that should not be taken too seriously or strived
for completely without the understanding that there is a place for support
proprietary software, for people who want and use proprietary software, and
the fact that open and proprietary software can coexist on *ANY* platform.
> 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.
I don't. Please read item 4 again quite carfully. I had to tackle
someone else who had a radical view of what the DFSG was and was not. To me
the DFSG is the ideal philosophy. To me it states that well will produce
open software *BUT* we acknolwdge that there is not only a right but a need
for prorpietary and we support the *USERS* decision over our own ideals. I
am not stuck on the definition of what is and is not free.
> 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.
Why? It works for them, end of story. I also agree with you here,
begrudgingly. It doesn't meet the standards set by the DFSG, it is not open,
it is contrib or non-free.
> 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).
I don't think it is a shame. What is a shame is people taken any "open"
or "free" movement to such extremes. Let me explain it in simple terms.
The choice to release under a proprietary or open license stems from one
simple choice, how does one want to me compensated for their time. In the
former, the compensation is clear, money. Like it or not, money is needed in
this society to survive and programming, like it or not, *IS* a marketable
skill. In the latter the compensation is that if someone elses improves upon
your code you're guarenteed to get those improvements if they release them to
the general public. Or, in the case of Debian and Debian Developers, we
maintain a package or package and in return other people maintain packages.
We worry about our little part, they worry about theirs and we all get more
easy to install packages than we would individually.
It comes down to, which is more important to you at the time and for that
project.
Conversely when a person, such as myself, chooses which software to use
they can stay away from commercial software, they can stay away from open
software, or they can, like me, use what works no matter what. If it is
commercial and they feel it meets their needs and is for a resonable price,
go for it, pay the registration fee. If it is open, that's fine too.
But I don't think that anyone should *EVER* dictate what other people
shoudl and should not use based solely on whether or not it is open or
proprietary. I don't think people should place a negative stigma on
proprietery software. It is not a shame that Trolltech released QT the way
it did. They chose to eat. However, they did come up with a creative
licensing scheme which allows people to develop for their product in the
spirit of the GPL and they have protected that license arrangement in case of
their company being bought out or disbanding.
There is *NO* shame in that or using it.
--
Steve C. Lamb | Opinions expressed by me are not my
http://www.calweb.com/~morpheus | employer's. They hired me for my
ICQ: 5107343 | skills and labor, not my opinions!
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