Re: let's be practical [Re: Software in main etc.]
Hello.
On Thu, May 06, 1999 at 11:58:08PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>
> Let me suggest one possibly large cost that you did not mention: loss of
> focus. Right now Debian has a clear message that unifies developers. A
> kind of mission statement. It is also a message that Debian effectively
> advocates to the outside world. Cluttering said message is not to be taken
> lightly; it makes it harder to tell others and ourselves what we stand
> for.
Debian has enough room for "extreme free software activists" who would only
want to put energy in "pure", and "anti-GPL-which-kills-my-right dudes" who
would want to work on other software, too.
We just would need a setup where those interests don't collide. There is the
real problem: People who feel strong about Free Software (morally), see a
chance to make a more restrictive distinction. But currently, they can't
work on this because they would step on other peoples toes, who don't think
we should get more restrictive.
A good proposal would have to address that and show how both groups can work
together without conflict.
Gordon showed one such possibility, creating a new distribution inside the
existing one.
I am absolutely sure that Debian is flexible enough for such a setup. Think
of it as several purity layers: If you don't care much, you work on whole
Debian. If you care, you don't actively work on non-free. If you care a lot,
you exclude non-free and contrib. That's the current amount of choice.
The idea proposed here is to create Yet Another Choice, which allows for
people who feel strong about it to work only on a subset of main. This
subset should be easily identified.
What everybody has to understand is that we are talking about adding choice,
not removing. We could arrange it that end users see the same as current
main, if they don't say otherwise (by ordering their distribution from a
"purist" reseller or whatever).
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org finger brinkmd@
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