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



On Sat, Jun 17, 2000 at 12:07:57PM -0600, Dwayne C . Litzenberger wrote:
> 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.

The effort of the GNU project allows to run free software on non-free
operating systems. This is good, because it allows that more people learn
about free software and use it.

The question at hand is if Debian should distribute non-free software to be
run on a free operating system. Can we agree that there is a difference?

(I am not trying to make an evalutation here. People have made the point
that this non-free software attracts more people and thus furthers free
software [I disagree with the second part of this, btw]).

> 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.

Luckily, nobody will try to tell you what to use. Your objection has nothing
to do with the GR at hand.
 
Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org Check Key server 
Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org    for public PGP Key 
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de,     marcus@gnu.org    PGP Key ID 36E7CD09
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/       brinkmd@debian.org



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