Re: Migration of non-free packages to testing

[Junichi Uekawa <dancer@netfort.gr.jp>]

> Well, that someone was me last time.  What do people think about it now?
> 
> I would be happy to resurrect it and re-propose it now.  I feel its need
> even more now than before.
> 
> We have come a long way in many respects, and I really see no reason that
> Debian needs to be providing non-free software.

We still need some non-free software for interfacing with 
closed and non-free hardware.

We have printer drivers (PIPS?), and other things, for example.

So we might have come most of the way where we have free software
fully functional within the normal grounds, we have some
non-free stuff for interacting with the hardware.


I don't think we really need to keep non-free for random documents
and old games that have strangest of licenses, but some 
drivers are still really useful, and I doubt that we can or should
eliminate them right now, yet.

The hardware available depends on where you live, and you may
happen to have access only to some hardware with 
non-free drivers.


However, non-free should not mean low-quality, and it might be better
just to remove buggy packages from the non-free distribution.



regards,
	junichi