Re: General Resolution: Removing non-free
grendel@vip.net.pl (Marek Habersack) writes:
> > It is a largely technical proposal with some alterations to the Social
> > Contract to clear up some muddy language and terminate a compromise that
> > was made years ago for pragmatic reasons.
> As much as I agree with the idea of getting rid of the non-free software
> from the Debian distribution I also think it should be done in a most
I feel compelled to point out here for the umpteenth time that
non-free software is not part of the distribution, has never been, and
no doubt never will be.
> reasonable way. Ripping it from beneath of the (potential) users would make
> no good to the distribution. After all the *users* is what justifies the
Nobody is removing software from beneath the users. Even my
resolution states that we still support users that choose to use
non-free software.
> existence of Debian - whether we like it or not. You're perfectly right -
> nobody will prevent the users from downloading, using, compiling non-free
> software but, unfortunately, even in the Linux world the users are becoming
> to belong to the same category what Winblows lusers - "I wanna have this
> piece of software, I don't wanna download, compile, install it all on my
> own and read all the damned docs on how to integrate it with Debian". And
So they use apt to get it, just like they do now. They have to
download it now anyway, as it's not part of the distribution.
> that's the whole problem. From the moral point of view, IMO, it would be
> sufficient if the non-free software wasn't a) suggested by free software, b)
> advised to be installed by any official Debian documentation. It most
Hiding the truth from people is not necessarily ethical, and one can
make the case that it is not ethical even as a means to an ethical
end, which is itself of questionable ethics. Better is to avoid that
question and to instead not engage in activities that are in support
of non-free software.
> above software so that it fits Debian, but what about the others? Let us not
> be fanatics because fanatism is a foe to the reason...
I find it horrid that Debian developers are suggesting that having
Debian support only Free Software is a fanatic act! Debian *started*
like this and went that way for some time.
-- John
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