Re: Software in main that is throughly useless without non-free software
Hi,
>>"Anthony" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
Anthony> On Tue, May 04, 1999 at 10:53:14PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> Imagine when a group of people say "Hey, call us using
>> foo-grubble, and we can have a neat game". And we have to say, sorry,
>> no can do, I use linux, and I am unable to do that.
Anthony> Not exactly. You'd have to say "Sorry, no can do, I don't
Anthony> like having anything to do with non-free software, at all,
Anthony> so I refuse to be a part of that."
Your choice. I prefer proving that Linux can do anything, only
better. And this is free software as far as the DFSG is concerned.
Anthony> After all, by installing something from contrib, you haven't
Anthony> suddenly turned your machine into a Windows 95 box, or
Anthony> anything. You're still running Debian GNU/Linux, you've just
Anthony> installed some extra stuff that depends on non-free software
Anthony> for its functionality.
It is the priciple of the thing. You have decided to throw
free software out of debian cause it (horrors) talks to some
proprietary software running somewhere on the net
Anthony> If I may quote from the social contract:
>> 1. Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software
>>
>> We promise to keep the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free
>> software. As there are many definitions of free software, we include
>> the guidelines we use to determine if software is "free" below.
Anthony> In other words: main is free software. Software that's
Anthony> GPLed, or BSDed, or QPLed, or whatever. In particular, we
Anthony> won't suddenly stick Qt1 on your system, no matter how cool
Anthony> it is. We'll wait for Qt2 or gtk or something that's free to
Anthony> come along, even if it makes your system less functional.
Anthony> But for things like TiK, hell, they're free software! Why
Anthony> not put 'em on?
Bingo. Tik does not fail any of the criteria above. Why are
you throwing it out?
>> We will support our users who develop and run non-free software on
>> Debian, but we will never make the system depend on an item of
>> non-free software.
Anthony> And here's the issue under discussion: TiK depends on an
Anthony> item of non-free software for its functionality. It doesn't
Anthony> depend on it as heavily as KDE used to (does, whatever),
Anthony> but, in at least some sense, it still *needs* non-free
Anthony> software to be useful.
Look up the word system. NTFS does not make the system depend
on non free software (or do you have a replacement for the kernel?
(try creating an NTFS file system without using non-free
software). Bah.
Anthony> I must admit I don't really care about this. We're not
Anthony> stopping anyone from doing anything -- TiK can still be
Anthony> packaged, still mirrored, still distributed by CD, you name
Anthony> it. We're not saying that we can't or won't distribute it,
Anthony> we're not even saying that it's bad, all we're saying is
Anthony> that you can't use it without non-free software.
You are throwing it out of Debian. Contrib is not part of
Debian. read the social contract.
Anthony> And yes, I realise there's a distinction between "without non-free
Anthony> software running on some other machine" and "without non-free software
Anthony> running on *your* machine". I don't see it as being a particularly
Anthony> crucial distinction, though.
I think there is. I think the latter is free, and we need
to encourage it, so someday we may have all free systems
manoj
--
The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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