Re: Screw non-free.

[Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > Non-free and contrib crept in as a matter of convenience. At the time the vast 
> > majority of people could not download something as big as Debian so their 
> > importance was discounted. Those times are passing and we need to come to 
> > terms with where we came from so that we can firmly perceive where we are 
> > headed.
> >...
> 
> non-free will become more important in the future:
> 
> With Debians position regarding documentation licenses (especially the 
> GFDL), the documentation (e.g. man pages and info files) for many 
> important free programs in Debian will have to go into non-free after 
> the release of sarge.

If non-free becomes more important, we failed.  That would be another
reason for me to get rid of it as soon as possible in order not to
contaminate more people's hard disks.  I really appreciate the
decision of the debian-installer people to stop mentioning this
repository in the new installer.

Anyway, if more programs go into non-free, their use should be
discouraged if people want to use a Free system.  They chose on their
own, though.

Also, if Debian has anything to say and has a sufficiently large
userbase, people will notice that some programs and documentation are
missing, which will lead to discussions with upstream to use a
different license.

Regards,

	Joey

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