Re: Public humilation of Joseph Carter
> JC> I object to what I feel would be a policy which narrows the
> JC> definition of "truly free" software beyond that which the social
> JC> contract and DFSG currently provide.
>
> Then you've proven yourself to be a legalist, and not somebody who is
> capable of actually *writing* policy. Policy writers have to be
> flexible and dynamic, understanding that the status quo is only our
> current approximation of perfection.
My two little pennies worth. I'm sort of against the "pure" concept, but
only because main is _supposed_ to be pure, by it's own definition. What I
think Joseph is missing is that putting things in contrib does not make
them non-free, nor does it say that Debian makes it non-free. Policy
states that things in contrib _must_ be DFSG compliant, and by that we
have a right to put things in there that aren't suitable for main, but
still meets the guidelines.
Now it seems that contrib wants to bleed over to main, and some people
(Joseph) are concerned that it's a "double standard" to start putting
things into contrib that should be. Well guess what, it is and should be.
Some people are concerned (Joseph) that putting things in contrib makes it
seem second hand to our users....so what. This is a Debian
distribution...not program foo's redistribution point. We don't put
software in here for the sake of that one piece of software, we do it for
the sake of creating an OS for our users and the community, not for any
single program to be "in the lime light".
My opinion, get back to the roots of our goals and gut main to meet the
standards that Debian was built on. Don't water down the issues or pretty
soon we will have "holy, pure, main, dusty, dirty, trash, non-free,
pure-evil, and satanic" sections.
NOTE: Joseph, please don't reply to this, as we both know our opinions
completely differ, and no matter what my statements, you will disagree.
(you probably disagree that we disagree, but that's a trivial point).
Ben
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