Re: Discussion - non-free software removal

[Steven Fuerst <svf@mssl.ucl.ac.uk>]

> On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 11:09:02AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >  John> It seems that with all the obvious interest in this, and the number of
> >  John> people we have around that have well-connected high-powered machines to
> >  John> offer, that it would be more unlikely that no replacement would appear.
> > 
> >       Fine. Find me one. Just one. That would take a couple of
> >  non-free packages. I suspect you'll find that it is harder than you
> >  think. 
> 
> Hell, I'll host angband in an apt-gettable repository myself if that's what
> it takes to get this GR passed :-)
> 
> What other packages did you have in mind?
> 
> -- John
>

I am the upstream maintainer of Zangband (which is also in non-free due
to the same technicality that angband has.)

I'd like to see Zangband, Angband, and Moria still be apt-gettable.

I use debian, and have over the past three years - but I really can't
see how removing these essentially open-source projects from debian
helps in any way.  I am already attempting to rewrite most of the
Zangband source so that the license can be changed to GPL - but
forceably removing it from my distribution because I can't code fast
enough makes me angry.  Robert Ruhlmann (the 'upstream' maintainer of
Angband) has already changed distributions from Debian to Gentoo due to
silliness like this.  I can see myself following if this project heads
towards the direction of idealism, instead of facing reality and
realising that some open source code happens to predate the debian
mission statement.

The debian project has to realise it has users and upstream maintainers
as well as the people who create packages.  Your GR totally ignores this
fact.

Steven