Re: A plea for some peace
On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 04:00:58PM -0400, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
>
> Some people have started to talk like if they don't get their way on
> this vote they will pick up and leave. That's distressing. I
> certainly hope they don't do so. The "pick up your toys and go home"
> philosophy has been to the serious detriment of the various BSD camps,
> and I hope it doesn't infect us here.
>
We will not be pouting and leaving. We will have been driven out.
Roughly half my packages are non-free. I'll have been told take them
elsewhere. If I then have to create that elsewhere-to-go-to why wouldn't I
take the entire free archive with me and fork the project?
We tried to tell Goerzen this would happen on IRC. He, you, and the rest
are not listening. If we have to create nonfree.org or whatever it won't
just be an add-on to DFSG Debian. We'll have to take free Debian too to
make sure DFSG packages aren't yanked out from under non-free packages that
still depend on them (libc5 for instance for binary-only games, libc6 vs
6.1).
Then there's the package-name conflicts. What happens if Debian decides
to use a package name that's already in the non-free archive? Since we're
outside Debian do you really think the maintainer would voluntarily change
his new package name because of a conflict with some older piece of non-free
software written by those immoral splitters? And then there are .deb
content conflicts as well that we'll end up having to fork and rename
packages over.
We don't like working on non-free software. We do because *we* need it.
When I get bug reports on my non-free software if the bug isn't
security-related or important to me I treat it as a wishlist item.
It has lower priority for me. "Debian" is us. We decide how much support
non-free gets. This General Resolution will *force* me to put more time
into non-free. Do you understand now why there is such violent opposition
to it? The existence of non-free on Debian servers doesn't make you spend
any time on it, use it, or anything. The absence will make me spend a lot
more time on it.
The option to prevent this from happening is yours.
-Drake
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