On Sun, Jul 30, 2000 at 06:32:44PM +0200, Bernd Eckenfels wrote: > Lets put a "important call for donation" on our Web Page and in a press > release. I bet we will draw some attention. > > "The Debian GNU/Linux Projects needs help to port the most free Linux > Distribution to the ia64 Architecture. We refuse to build our Distribution > on non-free Emulators and it is hard to set up a build environment for > bootstrapping a clean debian system without access to a native compile > server. Therefore we ask everyone interested in supporting a real free > project to donate some compile ia64 machines". The phrase "we refuse" sounds a bit contrarian. It also obscures the point about one quite practical reason we don't want to use non-free tools; if we restrict ourselves to Free Software in the bootstrapping process, we can get IA64-specific bugs (or, more likely, simple failures to implement IA64-specific minutia) shaken out of those tools, if any exist. There is of course an ideological component to the decision as well, but let's not forget that even RMS grounds his idealism in real-world sensibility: he wants to be able to fix a program if it breaks, and he wants to be able to share the software, along with his fixes, with his neighbor. I think if we issue such a press release we should not obscure the fact that our dedication to 100% Free Software is not some Utopian ideal disconnected from reality. By doing so, we can improve the quality of Free tools for everyone. -- G. Branden Robinson | When dogma enters the brain, all Debian GNU/Linux | intellectual activity ceases. branden@debian.org | -- Robert Anton Wilson http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |
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