Re: Question Re: Advertising in Packages
On Sun, Aug 15, 2021 at 09:14:18PM -0600, Antonio Russo wrote:
> On 8/15/21 9:06 PM, Paul Wise wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 2:22 AM Antonio Russo wrote:
> >
> >> "Can one advertise non-free services in a Debian package?
> >> Is doing so a violation of some Debian policy?
> >
> > There is no specific rule against this, but I feel that culturally
> > Debian generally doesn't like this.
>
> +1
>
> >
> >> The details are filed against firefox[-esr], #992208 [1] (which was
> >> summarily closed without very much discussion). The non-free services in
> >> question are Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter.
> >
> > I'd like to see those removed too, but ...
> >
> > I expect removing these might violate the Firefox trademark license,
> > which would mean we would have to go back to the Iceweasel branding.
>
> I feel like if we are forced to rebrand Debian's browser to ensure user
> freedoms, then we simply must do so. I'd rather support Firefox/Mozilla,
> but I don't think we should allow ourselves to be bullied.
>
We spent years doing this: it didn't buy a great deal and caused significant
work. Explaining "why Iceweasel" was generally hard enough. The folks behind
Mozilla and Firefox eventually accepted Debian's code quality
(and ports to other architectures) as sufficiently good and worthwhile that
they allowed us to dsitribute Firefox as Firefox.
Firefox is already problematic in that we can't have a fixed version and
backport fixes (which is what we do with most other packages) - so,
in common with others, we package Firefox-ESR. (And that's _hard_ on
some architectures).
Our priorities are "our users and free software" not the other way around.
In this case, it's a pragmatic compromise that's not limited to Debian.
> > The Debian users who are aren't against non-free services would likely
> > get confused/annoyed if standard web services for their country were
> > to disappear.
>
> I agree; we should try to find localized equivalents in other regions,
> or simply provide no suggestions.
>
> People who will miss something, would know how to get to it.
Not necessarily: people migrating to Linux from, say, Windows / ChromeOS
will expect the same browser.
>
> >> I would propose we replace these with things like lemmy, mastadon, peertub,
> >> matrix, framasoft, fsf.org, and debian.org.
> >
> > These are mostly names of software rather than services, unless you
> > suggest to point at specific hosted instances of these software
> > projects.
>
> https://joinpeertube.org/
> https://join-lemmy.org/
> https://joinmastodon.org/
> https://view.matrix.org/
>
> All provide some listing of instances (in fact, my preliminary patch points
> to these). They're relatively sparse, but that's more of a chicken-or-egg
> problem:
>
> If even Debian doesn't bother referring people to our FOSS allies, how
> are they supposed to grow?
>
> - Antonio
I understand the motivation. Given the significant problems of Iceweasel /
Icedove etc. creation and maintenance, I'm not convinced it's worth it
on the balance of available effort vs. ideological freedom in this specific
instance.
Andy Cater
Reply to: