Re: Seconded, sponsored. (was Re: General Resolution: Removing non-free)
tb@MIT.EDU (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> 1) Currently many poeple (as evinced by this very flame war) think
> that non-free is part of Debian. How can we prevent the average
> new user from getting this impression? (One idea, for example,
> would be to include vrms by default on all new installations. I'm
> not sure that's the right way to do it, but it's one thing that
> might work.)
This is being discussed elsewhere in this flamefest, so I'll not start
that thread again here.
> 2) Bugs in the interactions between main and non-free might hold up a
> release. This should never be allowed to happen, a release of
> Debian should never have to wait for something in non-free.
Indeed - the release manager should pull non-free packages that break
main packages if necessary
> 3) We all agree that we should try to move to a place where non-free
> is necessary, I think: we all agree that non-free is an unfortunate
^unnecessary?
> reality; there are many things available only in non-free that are
> not in main which are important to many users (including, I repeat,
> me). We should provide some kind of back-pressure to avoid the
> twin evils of author's releasing softare which is non-free
> ("because it doesn't really matter; Debian will take it anyway")
> and nobody taking the initiative to make the free alternatives
> really work ("because everyone can get the non-free one and it's
> good enough").
We do this by convincing people that free software is a good thing in
its own right - that's quite a paradigm shift for some of the people I
know, and it takes time and patience to do so.
Also there's evangelism by example - I'm working on a free browser for
instance.
This is the way to persuade people to work on free alternatives -
persuade them of why non-free software is bad; giving the impression
of fanaticism won't convince anyone - it'll scare them off.
Matthew
--
"At least you know where you are with Microsoft."
"True. I just wish I'd brought a paddle."
http://www.debian.org
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