Re: General Resolution: Removing non-free
On 10 Jun 2000, John Goerzen wrote:
> grendel@vip.net.pl (Marek Habersack) writes:
>
> > > No indeed. I was trying to get the point across -- are we really
> > > going to continue the support of the distribution of non-free software
> > > merely because of GAMES?! You seem to think that games justfiy this.
> > Hmm... Although I'm not a player myself, I recognize that it's games that
> > drive at least a large part of the computer industry - whether you like it
> > or not. It applies certainly to the PC hardware. And whether one likes it or
> > not, games is what attracts many users to that or another OS... So, yes,
> > they *also* are a reason for *not* removing the section.
>
> Debian is NOT about marketing. Read the Debian Manifesto. Debian is
> about Free Software. Why else would we not package up KDE, or
> distribute Debian with a bundled version of Doom or Quake? (Well,
> before Quake was Free) Because we care about Free Software more than
> marketing.
Erm, we do not package Doom or Quake (before Quake was free) for
the same reason we do not package Office or Windows. They are not legal to
distribute. Only things that are legal to distribute make it in to non-free.
We certainly do not go out of our way to attempt to make agreements with
vendors to be allowed to distribute their software and I believe that as
well as many other things points out to our users that we are not about
commercial software.
We are also about our users, as illustrated by the Social Contract.
I feel the need to also point out that we are about our developers. Those
who package and maintain those packages. Without them Debian would be
nothing, literally. If all of our developers felt there was no use in
having non-free there would be no packages in non-free. This clearly is
not the case.
Stephen
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