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Re: Discussion - non-free software removal



On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 10:39:09PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> 	I have long been of the opinion that non-free shall dwindle
>  and wither away of its own accord.  The argument was easy to make
>  when we were deciding on the content of the social contract; it was
>  harder to make a couple of years ago; and now that things have
>  changd, and free software has exploded, people who would place
>  ideology first are harder then ever to convince.

Well said, but we should remember that a lot of prominent people from the
very GNU Project use Debian because of their beliefs. If we have already
convinced the likes of RMS that the existence of the non-free section does
not impact the freeness of the system, what more is there to strive for? :)

> 	Before you draw conclusions about my stance on this issue, let
>  me state that I have not yet made up my mind. Apart from java (which
>  is not even in non-free), I only use graphviz and angband; so it
>  wouldn't be that hard for me to give up and join the apathetic masses
>  on this issue; I just was irritated enough by tone of this message to
>  respond. 

I could ditch all six of the packages vrms regularly reports on my system as
well, so as far as that is concerned I'm pretty much agnostic. I am,
however, entirely unimpressed by the reasoning for the change that has been
laid out (both two years ago and now), so I'm inclined to vote against it.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.



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