On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 10:37:34PM -0800, Osamu Aoki wrote: > Hi, You are writing in the blazing fast speed :) > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 11:25:23PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 11:07:04PM -0500, Mike Dresser wrote: > > > On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, Branden Robinson wrote: > > > > > > > Clearly, 2.7% is too high a threshhold for some. How small shall the > > > > propotion get before we're not screwing our users by dumping non-free? > > > > 2.5%? 2.0% 1.5%? 1.0% 0.001%? > > I do not think % shall be the criteria. What should be, then? > I do not understand point you are making. > > You had choice between mutt and pine. You chose mutt. Several factors > affected it but "Free" was one of the deciding factor. After all it was > your personal choice and nobody forced you to do this even in remote > sense. I think that is the way it should be for everyone. Nothing about John's GR would render Pine unavailable. > Do not you want everyone to enjoy the same freedom and choice you > enjoyed? Just because you are through or majority of DD are through > with pine, mutt should not be forced to the minority of USERs who > needs/wants to use non-free pine or even should feel like to be forced > to use mutt. Nothing about John's GR would render Pine unavailable. > Even if Debian drops support for non-free, I understand Debian is not > forcing people to use Free software theoretically. After all people can > get those software elsewhere. But from USER's viewpoint, if Debian push > FREE idea too much by dropping non-free, users will feel like they are > forced to swallow MAJORITY of Debian's opinion. I think it will taste > bad and this kind of approach will not help FREE software at all. If > you consider the perception of Debian integrity as a factor to remove > non-free, this is one to consider. I'd rather not deprive users of the choice to vote with their feet if they don't like the outcome of a vote on the proposed General Resolution. > The judgment of the "LAST DAY" should be left to the USER. I'm not sure what place Christian apocalypticism has in this discussion. > In practical terms, this means until the last day its sponsor DD stop > supporting it in non-free or the USER decide to switch himself > earlier. By your own reasoning, a decision by a Debian Developer to stop supporting a non-free package, and requesting its removal from the archive, is just as much a betrayal of the users as this GR is. > The sheer idea of making this kind of transition by some kind of > majority rule is very saddening. The prevention of this transition by a minority -- even a minority of one, as your approach would have it -- seems even worse. > I am begging you to reconsider your position. Promotion of FREE > software is what we all want to do. And that's what Debian is for. Our users and Free Software. Non-free software is not one of Debian's prorities. Non-free software is deserving of caretakers who don't feel it is compromised. > I can live with such idea as the one Manoj mentioned to make install of > non-free software to trigger some messages to remind people. I am not in favor of guiltware or nagware. I am in favor of educated decisions. If we cease our distribution of non-free software, it is likely that the portion of our userbase that is concerned with non-free software will educate itself very quickly, likely with our help. But nagging people because they're installing a package smacks of the puritanism and political correctness that Free Software advocates are so tiresomely accused of. Also, I might add, it would be "debconf abuse". See debconf-devel(7). > If some one like you who are concerned can provide a FREE replacement > recommendation infrastructure (some kind of replacement list which > prompt people before installing), it will be quite amusing toy to > install. At this point I don't have enough interest in such a project to permit it to sideline the other things I work on, like XFree86. > These may quite likely be turn off by many user but we can show how much > we care about FREE software. As I said, I disagree that nagging or laying guilt trips on users is a good strategy. > Caring about FREE software is not forcing others to use it by GR. It is impossible for passage of John's General Resolution to force anyone to use Free Software. > By the way, numerically non-free has increased but look into the ratio > within archive and growth rate. The share of FREE software is > increasing. Yes. So? It looks like the non-free section is getting larger and larger, and more deserving of a team of shepherds that can take proper care of it. It is, however, not in Debian's charter to do so. > If you consider increase of DD which is bringing many > softwares and stringent License review which has pushed some archives to > the non-free, increase in number is not so much we need to worry. It is > healthy growth which is one third of FREE counterparts. non-free's > impact to the archive s decreasing. Aren't you happy with the number? No, not really. It means to me that the compromise of 1997 is getting more and more unwieldy. If non-free had shrunk to zero by now, or looked as if it were going to soon, I would not be concerned. Last time this dispute came up, in summer 2000, I decided it would be interesting to see where things stood next time people started arguing about it. "Maybe," I thought, "non-free will have shown signs of withering to its own demise." It hasn't. > > Anyway, what concerns me about the demands that non-free be kept until > > there is a "replacement" in free is exactly the argument you're > > proposing. You want much more than just a replacement -- you want a > > clone. That's setting the bar awfully high. With that logic people > > wouldn't migrate from Windows to Linux in the first place. > > So you think making non-free expelled by GR will move more people from > WINDOWS to LINUX? I do not understand your point. My point is that people often don't need a perfect clone of a piece of software to switch from one to another -- they just need something that gets the job done. However, we still have users of (for example) Pine, Netscape 4.77, and mpg123 who appear to feel that none of the several mail user agents and web browsers are insufficient. I don't know what is found wanting in mpg321. > Also you mentioned in other thread, "relaxing rule for main to include > historical semi-free softwares while expelling rest of non-free" is not > a good idea. Then we really compromise our 100% free promise. What > ever historical or stupid licensing reasons exist, non-free is non-free. Are you saying you agree with me? > If you find some program which should not be in our archive, file a bug > report on them with clear technical or legal reasons. Existence of > replacement or similar program is not enough, though. As you said above, even one user of a non-free package is enough reason for Debian to keep distributing it, in your view. It does not appear that the opponents of the GR are perfectly united. -- G. Branden Robinson | Never attribute to malice that Debian GNU/Linux | which can be adequately explained branden@debian.org | by stupidity. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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