Flame burning against non-free, time to think.
On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 11:40:38PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le jeu 14/11/2002 à 16:41, Osamu Aoki a écrit :
> Maybe accusing people of bigotry is not a good way to start things. Your
FYI: This words, I acknowledged implication and retracted.
I still have a feel of heavy handed approach here.
> propositions are reasonable, and the GR is reasonable too, so let's
> discuss objectively the advantages and disadvantages. And don't forget
> that removing non-free would have a strong ideological impact, being
> ethically "good" for us but also giving a strong message that we can now
> live without non-free software.
Your ideological and ethically "good" may damage some other users. Let
the non-free die peacefully.
> > I can live with some tighter restrictions:
> > (a) non-free with serious bug should be removed from unstable/testing
> > unless it is fixed in 1 year.
> > (b) Orphaned package (more than a month or so.) shall be removed.
> > (c) Threshold may be more than 3 DD to initiate new non-free package
> > (d) No FTBFS if it contains source and in this condition for a year.
>
> It would also be acceptable (to my eyes) if we'd tighten the non-free
> licensing guidelines. We should be able to maintain correctly the
> non-free packages, which means having the source and the right to patch
> it for bugfixes. We should also ensure that we have the right to
> autobuild all the arch:any packages, which would solve the testing
> problems.
If package prohibit user to patch, it may be a real problem. This is
more of technical issues which makes maintainers not be able to fix bugs.
If it only prohibit distributor to offer binary or patched source, it is
non-free but may deserve Debian space as long as someone takes care to
offer clean installer. ( a la pine-tracker)
Many Free for non-commercials from old days should happily live in
non-free. (Quite likely, you will not be sued for commercial use.)
Also, as for FPGA source code or DSP/sub-CPU firmware binary, if it
exists, I would say they should be allowed as a DATA for free software
as long as it is legal to distribute them in most countries.
Osamu
--
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Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> Cupertino CA USA, GPG-key: A8061F32
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