Re: Screw non-free.

[Evan Prodromou <evan@debian.org>]

>>>>> "MB" == Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp> writes:

    MB> Does anyone remember what other (if any) non-free packages
    MB> were considered `big and important'?  I wouldn't be surprised
    MB> if they've all gone the way of netscape.

Wasn't the blackdown JDK in non-free at some point?

Anyways, my stupid opinion on the subject is this: the time when
non-free was necessary to have a working GNU/Linux system is long
past. We don't have to make a deal with that devil any more.

So now we've got this rump non-free system, which complicates things
significantly. Despite the fact that we say "non-free is not Debian"
(the operating system), it's still part of Debian (the project,
people, and infrastructure). Having Debian-the-project put time or
effort into anything that isn't Debian-the-OS is wasteful.

Now, here's the downsides I see: some of the packages in non-free have
a long and venerable history, and the maintainers have put a lot of
work into them. So, that's kind of a bummer, to kinda throw away that
work. And, y'know, being told that the software you've worked on for 5
years isn't important is kind of insulting, too.

So, to the DDs who have stuff in non-free: bummer, man.

As far as users not being able to get non-free software: that's not
really likely. backports.org, apt-get.org, and other
"third-party" apt repositories are a pretty clear indicator that folks
will still be able to get their non-free software elsewhere. In fact,
I bet if we contact one of those groups, we could transfer non-free
and/or contrib intact.

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou
evan@debian.org