Re: Discussion - non-free software removal
Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net> writes:
[...]
> I'm trying to substitute something else in for a smell protocol that
> would be a more compelling reason to continue allowing new packages into
> non-free, and I'm coming up blank. The non-free, redistributable software
> that is most often regarded as "essential" is the software that I think
> it's most important that we help our users kick the habit of, since such
> software usually serves someone else's agenda by luring in the masses.
Well, I partly agree with you, but I dont think kicking
non-free as a whole is a good idea. I'd really love
if every piece of software I need would be free, and in main,
but there are exceptions. See #167189 for an example.
Mbrola is the ONLY speech synth available right now
which supports substantially more languages then just
english. This is a very important thing for
allowing visually impaired computer users to work with
Linux. I'd be happy if they'd release sources of course,
but it appears they are limited by a contract they
have with another company, so it seems we dont have
any chance to free mbrola. So as long as no one
develops a diphone synthesizer which comes
with 25 different langauges under the GPL, I'd really like
to see non-free stay.
> Do we serve our users by making it easier for them to become dependent
> on new forms of non-free software?
I agreed to the social contract, as you did, and I remember
clearly when reading no.5 I thought to myself:
"yes, that is a good thing to have."
> Do we serve Free Software by making it easier for corporations with
> proprietary agendas to gain access to the mindshare of our (not
> altogether insubstantial) userbase?
Given a trypical RMS viewpoint, it's not good to
provide non-free software at all. But can't we
just wait and actively try to replace certain non-free
components with free-software, and therefore
just reduce the non-free area? If someone
files a itp for a non-free package, which offers
functionality we already have in main, reject it.
>> On the other hand, the lack of easy availability of NetSmell might
>> motivate debian developers to create a free alternative sooner.
>
> This is my position.
But unfortunately this approach does not work for everything.
It would be very hard (and extremely timeconsuming) to attempt
to replace mbrola for instance(hmm, ok, it isnt even
in non-free now, but we're planning to upload soon.)
--
CYa,
Mario | Debian Developer <URL:http://debian.org/>
| Get my public key via finger mlang@db.debian.org
| 1024D/7FC1A0854909BCCDBE6C102DDFFC022A6B113E44
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