Re: Branden's contrib manifesto (was: Hey! Why does everybody love flaming so much? [was: `pure'])
On Fri, May 07, 1999 at 02:04:19PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>
> Anthony> Yes, we're urging them to make the server free too. But
> Anthony> we're not forcing them, and they can *certainly* resist our
> Anthony> demands.
>
> The person who wrote the client may have nothing to do with
> the server. If the two are distinct sets of people, you are punishing
> the author of the client for the author of the server not making the
> server free. Does not seem fair.
What I find distracting in these lines of argumentation is that it implies
that we ban and throw out such non-free-server dependant code out of Debian.
But this is only one alternative of implementing the proposal. Another
choice would be to distinguish between main packages, and declare a subset
of main as "pure", "strict", or whatever comes around to be least offensive.
Your only objection to this I saw and has merit is the work involved
creating such a subset. Obviously, the work should be done by the people who
propose or people willing to help them, so this is a non-issue, IMHO.
I saw no other technical counter arguments.
Your point above, that people will be offended by the classification of their
software is hard to buy. The obvious answer to this argument is the
following: Authors who have been offended until now that their truely free
software is mixed with software that is barely functional without non-free
software components in the world can now be happy that their software gets
finally the attribution it has earned. Packages which are in main will
stay in main, this can't really offend anyone, as the definition of main
will not change. Instead, some packages are also "strict" or "pure",
something that is very positive for these packages, but not negative for any
other, which are only main but not "strict".
Furthermore, this is merely opinion and personal. We should not base our
decisions on the feelings of some random people outside Debian. I am sure
you can find people who will be offended, as well as I can find people who
will feel quite the opposite.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org finger brinkmd@
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org master.debian.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de for public PGP Key
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09
Reply to: