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Re: freedom-subtracted.debian.org (was: Re: KDE)



On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 10, 1999 at 01:59:20PM -0500, Navindra Umanee wrote:
> > 
> > This one is just plain silly when you think about it.  We already had
> > a non-free directory, but suddenly that's not enough and we need a new 
> > virtual domain.
> 
> 
> ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main
> ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/contrib
> ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/non-free
> 
> This implies that all three are equal, which is not the message we want to
> give.

You can read anything you wish into the above, but if they are "equal",
then there would be no reason for the division, they would all just go
into main. The subcatagorization here is of stable distributions. We make
a clear distinction about non-free, that is not ambiguous to most folks.
Making the distinction helps clarify the difference between Free and
non-free, for anyone who cares to read the licenses involved.

You don't "teach" people about the difference between good and evil, by
only talking about good (or evil, for that matter). In fact, most
educational studies show that negative examples, with a few positive
examples, inform the student faster than giving only positive examples.

By making a clearly separate place for non-free software, we provide
examples of licenses that fall short of being free. We do no interfere
with the installation of these packages in our user's systems, by
providing proper Packages files for those archives. This seems to me to be
correct according to our Social Contract.

Later,

Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_-   Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide"  _-_-_-_-_-_-

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (850) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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