Re: Bug#181028: cdrecord: promotes non-free software
On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 10:44:10AM -0800, tony mancill wrote:
> Debian *is* an advertising medium for all kinds of things, both commercial
> and philosophical. This bug is merely an effort to espouse the
> submitter's philosophy over the interests of the person who did the real
> work, the upstream maintainer.
Whose philosophy is clearly in line with Debian's (use free software!), where
the upstream author's is clearly not (buy my proprietary software!). Using
Debian to advertise proprietary software is inappropriate. If you don't
believe me, please read the social contract and understand what Debian is all
about.
(Of course, nobody's suggesting that every mention of non-free software
be removed from Debian. Common sense applies.)
> Since we're obviously going to have a nice long flamewar about this, I'd
> like to dive right in and say that I find this position to be complete and
> total bullshit. We (Debian) are using Joerg's software to our advantage,
> not the other way around.
Wrong. It is a reciprocal arrangement: in return for software being free,
Debian offers free services to software authors.
> It's the tail wagging the dog when the
> distributor of software begins claiming that it offers more value than the
> software itself. Given the paticular nature of this piece of software,
Which has "more value" is irrelevant. No amount of value in a piece of
software packaged by Debian gives upstream authors any *right* to such
things as advertisement.
The permissions granted in free software license do, however, give us the
ability to remove things in packaged software that we don't like. That's
why Debian requires them. If upstream is granting these permissions in
the license with a disclaimer that says "but if you use them in a way I
don't like, I'll piss and moan and make life harder for you" (and the
modifications being made are reasonable, such as removing unwanted
advertising), then there seems to be a problem (unreasonable upstream).
Judging by Ben's comments on this topic, this may very well be the
case.
--
Glenn Maynard
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