Re: Clarifications
>>>>> On Sat, 10 Jun 2000 17:01:21 -0400 (EDT), Stephen Frost <sfrost@mail.snowman.net> said:
Stephen> On 10 Jun 2000, John Goerzen wrote:
>>
>> 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.
Stephen> Ah, so of course there wasn't ever any reason to put
Stephen> it there
Stephen> in the first place, it being just 'miscellany'. It couldn't
Stephen> have been put there to assist our users, of course not. So
Stephen> therefore our users will not be hurt by it if we remove it.
Stephen> I hope you realize I'm being sarcastic, and your claim that
Stephen> it is 'no more than miscellany' is false.
He didn't call the software miscellany. He called the distinction
between it being served on debian servers vs being served somewhere
else miscellany. False is a pretty strong word when you don't seem to
understand what Debian is about.
>> Why?
Stephen> People use non-free. It would in fact be interesting
Stephen> to see the
Stephen> stats on how many non-free packages are downloaded in a
Stephen> day/week/month etc. If people did not use non-free then
Stephen> removing non-free would make no difference. Given the
Stephen> amount of noise on this list regarding the removal of
Stephen> non-free I suspect quite a few people *do* use non-free.
It can still be served somewhere else. It's not shipped on Debian CDs
now. People still have to download it from the net. Where it's
downloaded from doesn't really matter.
>> 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.
Stephen> Or people will write installers for the non-free
Stephen> software, GPL them,
Stephen> put them in main and you've suddenly lost this 'advantage'
Other than the technical things that depend on non-free software can't
go in main. Your point is silly. No they will create website foo and
put the non-free software there.
Stephen> of not having non-free on the ftp sites. The 'advantage'
Stephen> being that Debian appears to the users to not have anything
Stephen> but pure free software. So, that is more time away from
Stephen> working on Debian proper and users see very little
Stephen> difference.
Stephen> Perhaps we should attempt to educate our users instead
Stephen> of attempting
Stephen> to make their decisions for them.
If a restaurant owner decides to stop serving food from company X
because that company is doing bad things to the environment is that
store owner making decisions for his customers? Course not. He's
making decisions for himself. Whether he keeps his customers is
another question entirely. Not serving non-free is a perfectly valid
thing for Debian the store owner to do.
>> 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.
Stephen> How do you define 'system'? I don't know about you,
Stephen> but when I
Stephen> last looked http.us.debian.org had non-free on it.
Read please. It's not a part of Debian. Just happens to be on the
ftp/http sites. It can reside elsewhere.
>> 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.
Stephen> You seem to feel that no one uses non-free. Given
Stephen> that there
Stephen> are something over a hundred different packages in non-free
Stephen> and that each package has to have someone maintaining it I
Stephen> would hazard a guess that at least a hundred people use
No because it can go somewhere else.
Stephen> non-free. Non-free is not part of Offical Debian. Our
Stephen> developers and users use some parts of it, however, and so
Stephen> they use a designated area for their work. To tell our
Stephen> developers that they are no longer permitted to use this
Stephen> space is going to aggrevate them and may cause them to leave
Stephen> Debian as a whole. I do not believe the 'advantages' such
Stephen> that they are out-weight losing even one of our greatest
Stephen> assets and what Debian was *built* with, our developers.
That's kinda what a vote is for. We may lose developers over this if
it passed, but I expect it won't be many if any. We may lose users if
this passes, but people don't use Debian for the non-free software.
They use it because they like it, so I suspect not many if any.
Jim
--
@James LewisMoss <dres@debian.org | Blessed Be!
@ http://jimdres.home.mindspring.com | Linux is kewl!
@"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." Bach
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