On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 02:03:28PM -0500, Joe Wreschnig scribbled:
[snip]
> > > See, though, that's the thing. None of us sweared to agree with RMSs
> > > views. However, we *did* promise to follow the Social Contract and DFSG,
> > > *at the very least* in regards to our work on Debian. And now you're
> > > saying that doing so is "nit-picking".
> > Yes, it is. Since I didn't break the SC nor the DFSG anywhere.
>
> > And yet you
> > are accusing me of doing it. The people responsible for removing the tg
> > driver broke the SC - why don't you go and lecture them instead?
>
> Because he is not a member of the project anymore? And even when he was,
Why would that make a difference?
> he didn't encourage flagrant DFSG violations. To quote your original
Did I do so? Where?
> mail again,
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01803.html
> > 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.
>
> If someone says "I intend to uphold the Debian Social Contract and abide
> by the DFSG in my Debian work", and then refuses to remove non-free
> stuff from main because there's no free alternative, I consider that a
> serious loss of credibility; the person is not living up to what they
> promised to do.
Joe, get a grip. Face the facts - the driver was removed _despite_ the fact
that there was a patch that was removing the "non-free" part of the driver.
That's totally wrong _and_ it breaks the SC. And stop accusing me when you
have no basis for the accusations, it is becoming annoying.
> > As far as I am concerned, the firmware uploaded to a device by a (free)
> > driver is not software from the host system point of view (and from its
> > user's point of view), it's just data. Therefore, removing the entire driver
> > based on the notion that it was non-free was entirely wrong (and it broke
> > the SC).
>
> The person who completely removed the tg3 driver actually shared your
> point of view, IIRC. Some people, like Herbert and apparently also
That's fine, he made a mistake never the less.
> Marco, find removing the whole driver a better solution. (In Herbert's
> case, I understand his reasoning, he didn't want to support such a big
> variation from upstream). I personally think GOTO Masanori's patch
How is removing a driver vs modifying it a "bigger variation"? Removing it
creates a bigger hole, IMO.
> should have been applied.
good, at least we agree on something.
> But realize that by this logic ("just data"), I can upload any m68k
> program to the x86 archive, because it's not really software. Does that
> make sense?
You're twisting the logic. m68k program can be executed on the m68k version
of the Debian system (even on the x86 one, by using an emulator), the
firmware cannot be executed on any Debian system, it is relevant only to the
hardware in question and it is treated (even stored) as data on that Debian
system. You can twist the logic all you want, though. By that token, I
suppose you will say that a word document is a "proprietary software", not
"just data" since it can contain, gross, VB code. Go figure.
marek
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature