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Re: Having a non-free and a non-cd branch?



"Steve Lamb" <morpheus@calweb.com> writes:

>     "We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software
> community. We will place their interests first in our priorities."

Actually I would argue keeping proprietary restricted use software separated
from the main distribution is primarily in their interests. It is to protects
"our users and the free-software community" from having to agree to unknown
restrictions on how they can use our distribution. If we, for example, allowed
a QT application onto the CD then someone porting would not necessarily be
able to redistribute the disk in circumstances where they might be violating
the QT license.

> >	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 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.

No, you've misunderstood the nature of free software, and futhermore
conflated the GPL with free software in general.

Many, probably most, free software development *is* compensated with money.
They are payed for their time and effort the same as in any service industry.
They don't however hold their clients hostage by providing their work products
under restrictive licenses. The choice is between providing your customers
with full value for their money or hoarding information and trading on the
freedom of your clients.

Now how's that for "religious zealotry"? What you called zealotry before is
actually the compromise position that is there precisely to balance the needs
of some of our users with the needs of other users, including those who would
like to avoid agreeing to restrictive licenses.

greg


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