Re: non-free removal GR and our position to it ...
On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 10:27:04PM +0100, Jérôme Marant wrote:
> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
>
> >> Why would I?
> >
> > Yeah, you see that is the whole problem. This whole plan to remove
> > non-free is highly dependent of the non-free package maintainer finding
> > the time for putting up this non-free parallel infrastructure. Time we
> > could be spending on more usefull things.
>
> non-free maintainers could also spend their time on packaging free
> software instead of non-free software :-)
Yeah, sure. Without the non-free package i maintain, i would have no
internet access (or windows only internet access, yik), so my work for
debian will be much less efficient.
Also, in case we decide to drop non-free, i will probably stop packaging
the non-free stuff (and spam any user request about it to the non-free
removal advocates :), and maintain the package only for my own benefit.
> > Also, it is a bit hypocrit to find it ok to have non-free back then when
> > you needed netscape and acroread, but today that you don't need them
> > anymore, you want to remove non-free without regard for the other people
> > whose non-free need are not yet eliminated by equivalent free software.
>
> I can bet that there are less and less people using non-free. Anyway, if I
> needed a non-free software, I wouldn't mind grabbing a package from
> another location than a debian.org machine. Really I don't see
> any annoyance.
Yeah. Did you try java on ppc lately ? i had to build jboss
professionally, jboss being a free software which could probably go in
contrib if someone packaged it, but neither kaffe nor the jdk 1.3
available as .deb would work, and the ibm jdk 1.4 was only available as
.rpm. That said, kaffe is almost there, so in the future i believe that
it should be ok.
But the problem is not that because most people don't need a given part
of non-free anymore, that we should stop working on the others. My
position on this is that we keep non-free, that we take a more precise
look on packages in there, remove the broken or obsolete ones, and
orient the users to free replacement while warning them about missing
features, and orient interested developers to the projects developing
free replacements. Also, i think that archiving and making publicly
available the discussion concerning licence changes would be a good
thing.
This way, the debian project would be actively involved in freeing the
individual non-free packages, thus increasing the freedom of our users,
instead of just droping non-free and letting people need them in the
jungle of private apt repositories or alienised packages, or to migrate
to another distrib. I also fear that some of the proponent of dropping
non-free have hidden agendas, namely that third party debian based
distrib will so have more added value for selling their own distrib. Not
sure if i agree with that, and if they want to make money on selling
non-free, i want a share of that as non-free package maintainer :)).
Anyway, all in all, removing non-free is a short sighted idea, which
will be nothing more than a political staement, but in the long run will
not strengthen the position of debian nor enhance the freedom of our
users.
Also remember our roots. Remember the times when ocaml was in non-free.
I am convinced that i had a much better standing with the licence
discusion with the ocaml team as if non-free was not existing. removing
non-free is an antagonism and a menace to the non-free authors, while a
licence change could easier be attained by working together.
> > And i cast a doubt on the quality of any such third party
> > infrastructure.
>
> What quality? The only missing part would be the BTS, which can be
> easily installed elsewhere. The other parts of the infrastructure
> are never used for non-free packages: as I said non-free packages
> are _not_ autobuilt, so basicaly non-free in debian is a package
> repository.
Yep, and migration of BTS bugs. I also like having all my packages in a
overview in the PTS, as well as the testing script. Also there are the
autobuilders. Do you really think this parallel architecture would
continue maintaining m68k or arm or some other such slow arch ? Do you
think it would be ok to remove non-free, but continue building non-free
stuff on the debian architecture ? Sure they don't get autobuilt, but
you can log in the other arches box and build your stuff. How often have
i done that for ocaml when it was in non-free ? And how long will it be
before the non-free repository becomes a paying one or something such ?
All in all, the remove nonfree defendent are people who don't really see
longer than the end of they nose (do you say that in english too ?).
Anyway, i have broken my promise, i didn't want to discuss this here, as
it is not the right place. I will see if i can come for SolutionsLinux,
and we can then meet on the february FirstJeudi and discuss this, or
earlier on the irc channel.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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