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Re: Let's not forget why many people use/contribute to Debian



On Sat, Jun 17, 2000 at 01:49:09PM -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> I get tired of hearing this argument. Using this goal, we might aswell
> start doing Debian/Windows and make it really easy. The whole idea behind
> Linux is to do things right. Switching to Linux is already asking people
> to do things the free way, and not the commercial way. Pointing out
> special cases within that scope is incorrect justification for what we do.

Netscape, xv, zip, tripwire, satan, mpg123, quake2, gpg-[idea|rsa|rsaref],
fortify, jdk1.1, festlex, gimp-nonfree, qt1g, and xanim are *not* special
cases.

Right and free are not the same things.  The GNU project wouldn't have gone
anywhere if RMS decided to refuse to support proprietary platforms.

I'm not against removing packages from non-free when there are free programs
that do everything that the non-free ones do.  I'm against someone telling me
Mozilla is "almost good enough so I have to use it" when I want to use
Netscape.

I don't quite see what reason there is to remove non-free, other than to
restrict people's choice.  If we are in the business of choice restriction,
*then* we might as well start doing Debian/Windows.

And you never responded to the second part of my post.  Is it worth the
inevitable fork?

-- 
Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.

"Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very
bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a
hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive
engineer."
   -- The Hacker HOWTO

Dwayne C. Litzenberger - dlitz@cheerful.com

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