On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 11:05:03AM +0200, Eduard Bloch scribbled: > #include <hallo.h> > * Joe Wreschnig [Mon, May 31 2004, 11:32:02PM]: > > > > I fully agree with you on that and you've given very worthy examples of > > > applications that replace the non-free ones. But note one thing - NONE of > > > their authors came moaning that "acrobat is bad, it has to be removed, guys, > > > remove it" - but they sat down and wrote the software. And what I was > > > talking about were people who go talking about something being wrong, about > > > politics, theoritizing and pointing fingers but doing nothing in order to > > > change anything. If somebody comes and says "the tg driver is bad, because > > > it is non free and I will remove it" and offers no alternative then, in my > > > book, that person loses _all_ the credibility as a software developer and > > > a person that can be trusted to do some task which requires responsibility. > > > > So, if no free alternative exists, any proprietary program (whether we > > have a legal right to distribute or not) can be in Debian if someone > > packages it. (Don't respond with "I'm not saying that", because you > > are.) > > Correct. That is why we have non-free as part of "distributable Debian". > // Note for the fanatics: it's "not part of Debian" as "Debian = Debian main" A side note here - notice how lively the fanatics react to the words "non-free" and how cleverly they don't provide any solution. That tactic is quite common in certain circles on this planet > And I fully agree with Marek, especially since nobody did convince me > that the embedded firmware chunks are not free-as-source. There are > extreme cases where the distribution conditions were violating the GPL > (IIRC Keyspan firmware) but this have been resolved in pre-woody times. And even if there are, GPL is not a holy grail, nor is DFSG. There are cases where it does make sense to make an exception and allow non-free or non-compatible (license-wise) software to be distributed/used with GPL (note - I'm not saying "free". GPL is NOT the only free software license, I would argue it's one of the most non-free among the OSI-approved licenses) software. For example OpenSSL which cannot be used with GPL software unless the latter contains an exemption clause that allows its use with OpenSSL. > > No, really, what the fuck are you smoking? Did you lose your place on > > the road to SuSE or something? Debian consists *only free software* > > whether or not some non-free program exists that can do something novel. > > What t.f. do you smoking? You deliberate work against our good old > social contract regardless of the consequences. Mr. Palmer has been told > where he was wrong and he failed to provide good proof for his claims. > You seem to follow his way and cut arguments to loony claims. That's seems to be the routine here, Eduard :) > Maybe you should leave Debian and start the "Extremely Free Debian" > project. Now that might not be a bad idea... Ever movement has its conservatists, liberals and extremists. I would say in Debian there are conservatists - those who want to include all the non-free software we could legally distribute, no matter whether there are replacement pieces of software for the programs; the liberals - who want non-free software if not worthy replacement exists; the extremists (Joe being one of them, he could be the leader of the pack, or at least one of them :)) - who want no non-free software even if they couldn't compile a C program because of that. I dare say that the conservatists and liberals could come to some agreements, but exteremists, and I love the idea, should start Extreme Debian. > > (P.S. I have, with various people, freely reimplemented two entire > > (music, graphics, code) proprietary games because I want to avoid > > non-free software. So, don't lecture me about sitting down and coding.) > > Dude, we don't talk about drivers (IMHO in many cases they are not that > hard to be developed if you did not sleep in the Protocol Engineering > courses). We talk about firmware that runs inside of the device. Amen. regards, marek
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature