On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 01:13:51PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: > 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. To the extent that non-free upstreams care about Debian at all (some clearly don't, like Adobe, which removed itself from the picture), my impression is that b) is more frequently the case than a) today. Free Software is not the oddity to "technology professionals" that it was five and a half years ago, when we adopted the Social Contract. However, as with other things, the scenarios you describe are "fiendishly difficult to quantify". -- G. Branden Robinson | I just wanted to see what it looked Debian GNU/Linux | like in a spotlight. branden@debian.org | -- Jim Morrison http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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