Re: Clarifications
On 10 Jun 2000, John Goerzen wrote:
> Martin Keegan <mk270@cam.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
> >
> > > 4. Debian was created with the cause of creating a free operating
> > > system. So says our Constitution. Distributing non-free software
> > > falls outside that definition, and the spirit of our organization.
> >
> > I'd *thought* that the spirit of the organisation was summed up by
> > the Social Contract as it now stands. What you're suggesting flies
> > utterly in the face of s4, which says that not only "Free Software",
> > but "Our Users" are the priorities.
>
> Why do you assume that our users will be hurt by removing non-free
> from the FTP site? Remember that the distribution does not contain
> non-free now. As this is software not in our distribution, but yet we
> put it on our FTP sites, it is no more than miscellany that ought to
> be expunged.
Ah, so of course there wasn't ever any reason to put it there
in the first place, it being just 'miscellany'. It couldn't have been
put there to assist our users, of course not. So therefore our users
will not be hurt by it if we remove it. I hope you realize I'm being
sarcastic, and your claim that it is 'no more than miscellany' is false.
> > The proposal to remove non-free from Debian (and hence, AIUI, from
> > the normal archive) will have a deleterious effect on the users, and
>
> Why?
People use non-free. It would in fact be interesting to see the
stats on how many non-free packages are downloaded in a day/week/month
etc. If people did not use non-free then removing non-free would make
no difference. Given the amount of noise on this list regarding the
removal of non-free I suspect quite a few people *do* use non-free.
> > > 5. Not distributing non-free software does not mean that non-free
> > > software cannot be easily used in Debian.
> >
> > Debian's apt-get is complicit in making software a LOT easier to discover
> > and install. That is also makes non-free software a lot easier to install
> > seems to have caused quite a few ructions.
>
> The fact that apt makes it easy is one reason that the proposal can go
> forth. All people need to do is update their sources.list files and
> things will still work.
Or people will write installers for the non-free software, GPL them,
put them in main and you've suddenly lost this 'advantage' of not having
non-free on the ftp sites. The 'advantage' being that Debian appears to the
users to not have anything but pure free software. So, that is more time
away from working on Debian proper and users see very little difference.
Perhaps we should attempt to educate our users instead of attempting
to make their decisions for them.
> > Except Section 4, that thing about the Users.
> >
> > "We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software
> > community. We will place their interests first in our priorities."
> >
> > Oh look! It wasn't "Our Users" and "Free Software". It was "our users and
> > the free software *community*" [my emphasis]. The proposed change injures
> > the interests both of the users (through having a more difficult system
> > to use) and those of the free software community, which will have to live
> > with an impoverished Debian system and the political flak from this
> > decision.
>
> The Debian system does not contain non-free now. How many times do I
> have to repeat this? The Debian system does not contain non-free.
How do you define 'system'? I don't know about you, but when I
last looked http.us.debian.org had non-free on it.
> You say it "injures" users but you don't say how. You say it injures
> the Free Software community because of an "impoverished" Debian
> system, and yet the Debian system would not change. You also fail to
> recognize that users of the Debian system do not necessarily use
> non-free, as it is not a part of the Debian system. And you fail to
> recognize that getting non-free software elsewhere is trivially.
You seem to feel that no one uses non-free. Given that there
are something over a hundred different packages in non-free and that
each package has to have someone maintaining it I would hazard a guess
that at least a hundred people use non-free. Non-free is not part of
Offical Debian. Our developers and users use some parts of it, however,
and so they use a designated area for their work. To tell our
developers that they are no longer permitted to use this space is going
to aggrevate them and may cause them to leave Debian as a whole. I do
not believe the 'advantages' such that they are out-weight losing even
one of our greatest assets and what Debian was *built* with, our
developers.
Stephen
Reply to: