Re: non-free removal GR and our position to it ...
Quoting Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>:
> 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.
You don't need a package, you only need to install a driver. Your
internet access has nothing to do with a package whatsoever.
> 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.
Why isn't it impossible to put such a package somewhere on the net?
Why do you absolutely need a debian.org machine?
I think your arguments are straw-man arguments :-)
> > > 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.
One should encourage kaffe improvements rather than encouraging the
use of the non-free jdk.
> 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.
The problem is that people are OK with living with non-free packages
and don't want license changes.
> 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.
If ocaml were still non-free, it would have had less success and probably
some people would have written a free alternative.
Currently, OCaml is still problematic with QPL though.
> > > 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 ?
You can still have access to those machines for building your
non-free stuff. They all have a chroot.
> 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 ?).
I'm sorry Sven but again, you gave nothing but straw-man arguments :-)
> 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.
You broke your promise but you started the debate ...
--
Jérôme Marant
Reply to: