On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 07:44:57PM -0800, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> Your ideological and ethically "good" may damage some other users. Let
> the non-free die peacefully.
Can you define "damage", please?
Also, what evidence is there that non-free will "die", given that it's
been growing by two distinct metrics?[1]
> 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.
...and this restriction is true of several packages in non-free. Should
they stay or should they go?
If they should go, where is your proposed amendment to John's GR to make
this a reality?
> 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)
Such a thing could go into contrib, and would not be affected by John's
GR at all.
> Many Free for non-commercials from old days should happily live in
> non-free. (Quite likely, you will not be sued for commercial use.)
I feel it is irresponsible to stake our fortunes on the likelihood of
getting sued, if we're violating the license on a piece of software, or
causing the operators of our mirror network to do so.
Note that this issue is completely irrelevant to non-freeness, since it
is possible to violate the license on a piece of DFSG-free software.
> 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.
What do we do about the countries where it isn't?
[1] Message-ID: <[🔎] 20021114103645.GA943@kleinmann.com>
Message-ID: <[🔎] 20021115040651.GB32282@azure.humbug.org.au>
--
G. Branden Robinson | Good judgement comes from
Debian GNU/Linux | experience; experience comes from
branden@debian.org | bad judgement.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Fred Brooks
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