On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 02:06:34PM -0600, Joe Wreschnig wrote: > It's awfully hard to convince them when there's no immediate downside to > their actions under the status quo. > "Make your drivers free, so they can be a part of Debian." > "What does that get us?" > "Uh... They move from one directory on our FTP site to another..." Drivers are usually more of an interest to the Linux kernel folks or the X upstream folks, or similar, than Debian per se. In those cases, if the drivers are freed and sent upstream, it means the hardware will be supported on the default install with no extra effort from users at all, more or less. For software in general, it means that we can include it on the Debian CDs and DVDs people buy, it means that we can include it in default installs, or if we make a task/subsystem that covers that program then we can include it, it means we can enhance it and send those enhancements back upstream, it means we can fix security problems, and so forth. Anyway, haven't you heard? Making software free is an end in itself, the inate benefits are fair and away more important than trivialities like being included in Debian. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.''
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