Re: Free bigot flame burning, time to think.
On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 07:41:02AM -0800, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> I am afraid if current momentum of FREE software bigot pushes their
> agenda, they may go further down to GR. (It is sad for me to see some
> of the respected DD of mine are on that camp.)
> I believe "Free and GNU are good, bigot of any kind is bad."
Excuse me, but I have demonstrated more than once in this very discussion
that I do not fit the definition of bigot. If there is any doubt in your
mind, compare what I proposed this week to what I proposed in 2000, and note
the differences and compromises therein. This kind of name-calling is
uncalled for.
> Reasons for not to expel non-free:
>
> (1) size of non-free section has no practical impact to over all
> archive size (<<3%) No real financial damage.
> See Susan's post Message-ID: <[🔎] 20021114103645.GA943@kleinmann.com>
That's not a reason "not to expel", it's just saying that "there's not much
difference one way or other."
> (2) If this is done then contrib will increase with installer and
> real source and packages may be hosted in SF.NET or somewhere
> with some standardized packaging practice. Even less real change.
This is not inevitable, and from the sounds of it, not likely.
> (3) If contrib is banned, then non-European Languages suffer awful X
> screen due to lack of fonts (CJK-font issue) This is as bad
> situation as Netscape was allowed to be binary only.
This GR does NOT ban contrib.
It does make it slightly easier to remove it later, but neither mandates nor
encourages that removal.
> (4) Many non-free are meant to be "Free" in the different context.
> Some trivial DSFG violation does not deserve to be that bad as
> long as there is a maintainer. ("lha" is classified as non-free.
> I would say these can be free if we have money to hire reasonable
> lawyer to argue in court. Some clause can be nullified due to
> its enforcement history. I saw some one wanted to drive APSFILTER
> to non-free recently.)
Then you should be seeking to amend the DFSG, not opposing this GR.
> (5) We are not asking these non-free opposing people to maintain
> package. So there is no resource issues.
I don't understand this paragraph.
> (6) Flame war on this issue is waist of energy. We will win
> non-free war by writing better free code (OpenSSH and GPG as good
> example).
Then why to the opponents to non-free removal continue to trot out examples
of "essential" bits of non-free software, even after the free alternatives
have been developed for what was once "essential" non-free software?
In other words, on what basis do you draw your conclusion that it is even
ever possible for the development of free software to become so advanced
such that there is not even one single non-free package with no free
equivolent that is considered "essential" by at least one person?
-- John
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