On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 10:53:48AM +0100, Martin Schulze wrote:
> If non-free becomes more important, we failed.
Not really. If it becomes more important for a little while, then less
important, then more important again, that's not failure, that's just
random fluctuation -- losing a battle doesn't mean losing the war.
But even then, *Debian*'s goal has never been to rid the world of non-free
software, it's been to make a free operating system. If we find non-free
software has become so important we can't do that, then we'll have failed,
certainly, but that's a pretty extreme example.
Considering we're now disagreeing with other parts of the free software
community on what's "free" and what's not, the fact that "non-free"
is becoming more important (in particular due to the GFDL) isn't even a
failure on behalf of the free software community; it's just a legitimate
disagreement.
> 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.
> 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.
Those two statements seem contradictory to me. If they're choosing
on their own, then it's not our responsibility to stop them from
"contaminating" their own hard disks.
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.
Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could.
http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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