On Thu, Mar 11, 1999 at 11:38:16AM -0700, Bruce Sass wrote: > > > I was working in dselect; forgot to install Apache for mrtg. ;P My boss, > > > who is watching, sees me select something necessary in non-free. Looks at > > > me, "is that commercial? What does it cost?" > > > > That's when you explain the DFSG to him. And why it's important. > > Uhmm, why not rename it to non-dfsg; > then the boss can ask, "What's dfsg, is there a dfsg version?" I've seen an awful lot of this recently, and this is not the first time and I'm pretty sure it won't be the last either. Usually the reason for it is something like "but we don't want people to think they should avoid stuff in non-free because they might have to pay for it or something..." To answer that, YES WE DO want to make people think twice about installing something out of non-free, at least twice. Debian is about free software. Non-free software is there because someone finds it useful to package. Some non-free software is widely used (Netscape, Quake) and other non-free software is used only by a few people. If calling it "non-free" causes people to think about it and consider if they really want to install the package or not, great! I do suggest that while we're talking about changing FTP layouts and the like (something which can be done in many forms, one or two of which I agree with) we should add something explaining what contrib and non-free are, specifically pointing out that you really should check /usr/doc/package/copyright to see that you can actually use the program freely or not. -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First! To boldly go where no bunch of geeks have gone before :) --Joel Klecker
Attachment:
pgpJNVGwo9KB5.pgp
Description: PGP signature