Has this thread reached the point where all participagtors have made up their minds and are going round and round in circles yet? Maybe it's time to table it until we can vote on the proposal. Or maybe we should stop repeating the same tired discussions and hear from anyone who has not made up his or her mind: What information are you lacking to decide? While I have leaned toward removing non-free from the beginning, I have not made up my mind between doing it with this GR vs. other solutions like forming a team that is empowered to kick redundant non-free software with good free replacements out of non-free. I also lack some information, but I don't know if that information is even available. We've talked about the effects non-free has on our users. One of my concerns is this: What effect does the non-free archive have on upstream authors' decisions about changing their copyrights? I know that many upstream authors have been convinced to change thier copyrights either to get their sofware into Debian main, or when we found a problem with the copyright of software in main, to prevent its removal. I've been involved in this many times, and seen it happen many more times. So I think we do have some effect on some authors. I do not know if this effect extends to authors of software in non-free (perhaps they are the ones who we _cannot_ effect!). If it does, I don't know if the continued presence of non-free is: a. Introducing upstream authors to Debian and/or to the benefits of having packages maintained by us and easily accessable to our users. And perhaps convincing some of them, eventually, to free their software to reap more of these benefits. b. Providing enough of said benefits to upstreams that they have little incentive to change thier license to receive even more. Any information to answer these questions would be appreciated, and could change my vote. -- see shy jo
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