Bug#809705: general: let people use non-free software but opt-out of non-open software
On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 1:10 PM, Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@debian.org> wrote:
> Then why should one have "non-open" at all? The argument was that this
> somehow brings some sort of "security" by being able to audit things
> (though the license may probably still forbid you from doing so or
> publishing your results, its non-free after all), but then there are
> "non-open" packages where this doesn't matter anyway...
Huh?
The argument for all this was, that people can easily opt-out of
non-open software if they wish to.
Which the debtags solutions doesn't really achieve.
Auditing the non-open software is anyway not possible, as it's non-open.
> The reason for the "non-free-firmware" component is the admission that
> in many cases non-free firmware is required to correctly use the
> hardware. While this is not ideal, we want people to be able to use
> Debian on their hardware with the minimum amount of non-free things[1].
Sure, as I've said before, it would be nice to have a
non-open/firmware special case.
And I think firmware is likely really the only special case here, as
often there's no way around it.
So people who want firmware but no other non-open stuff simply add only:
non-open/firmware
People who want both add both:
non-open
non-open/firmware
> I don't think Debian should bother with differentiating between levels
> of non-freeness on the level of components besides this: after all
> Debian is about free software, not the various levels of non-free
> things. Having them on the level of debtags or similar is way more
> flexible and more likely to suit different uses.
There are no different level of non-freeness involved in my proposal.
The one property is non-free, which means you cannot freely use it,
distribute it whatever.
The other is non-open, which means sources are not available, but they
owner might still fully allow you do use it, distribute it etc..
> Otherwise we end up with "non-free", "non-open", "non-free-data",
> "non-free-documentation", "non-free-firmware", "non-open-firmware",
> "non-open-data" and so on. Just imaging a sources.list with 10
> different non-free component and only one free component ("main") ;)
No,..not really, why should we? The only reason why there would be a
special case for non-open/firmware is that there is typically no way
around it if you have such hardware.
Sincerely,
Philippe.
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