Re: weekly policy summary
***** MS => Manoj Srivastava
Hi Manoj,
I value your input, but there are some of your points that I can't
really understand.
MS> Freedom of software should come on its merits, not because on
MS> Debian it is hard to find good (but non-free) software.
This is something I agree with. However: Debian is not (at least in
my eyes) an inform collection of software, the more the better.
First of all Debian is an operating system, and a free (in the freedom
sense) one.
We should not include in Debian every single piece of software there
is, and in fact we cannot include a broad collection of
software---sometimes better, or even far more better (from a POV I
don't share, but you and many others apparently do) than what we
have---just because its license doesn't allow us even to redistribute
it, let alone to use it. Beyond this, we choose to make Debian a
_free_ operating system: non-free software has naturally no place in
this project, for the very reason we choose to rule it out.
So, why should we fear to *choose* what do we want to be Debian?
After all, if other people and/or group disagree with our choice, they
can still build a `better' (from their POV) distribution on top of
ours, and we declare ourselves more than happy with this approach.
Where's the problem? We even have non-free, and contrib, what should
we do more to accommodate non-free users?
As you see, this whole issue stems from this one question: «What do
you want Debian to be?».
MS> What if it is true? What if the non-free software does indeed
MS> provide functionality missing in Debian? We bury our heads in the
MS> sand and pretend that it does not exist? We do our users a disservice
MS> and make it harder for them to discover and istall the missing
MS> functionality?
What's the problem about installing non-free software on a Debian
system, by hand, or by means of a deb package if it exists?
Nobody here wants to forbid users to do this, and there are many of us
who are indeed happy to help. We even encourage software companies to
build their own deb packages, if they want to: does this means we
should allow those packages to be referenced from Debian (i.e., main)
ones?
Now, what has this to do with non-free software slipping into Debian,
even if only by means of a suggestion link? They appear to me as two
very different things, and I believe matters should be separate: here
you have Debian, the free, universal, operating system; there you have
non-free software, which you may want to install if you need it. Both
things work well together, but they are very different things: you can
have a purely free Debian system, and you can install the very same
non-free software on a non-Debian system, or you can mix them at your
leisure if you are so inclined.
Beside, users will easily know about non-free software from Freshmeat,
advertising, and the like, if they want to, so there's no point
arguing that if we don't teach them about it they'll never know of its
existence (this would indeed be a very Debian-centric point of view,
that I don't think refers to reality by the slightest bit).
We are not the User Information Department, what we truly are is
expressed by this definition:
>--------------------------------------------------------------------<
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made
common cause to create a free operating system.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------<
we shouldn't IMHO forget it.
MS> We do free software a disservice by trying to hide non-free
MS> software, or making harder to install, on the grounds that we fear
MS> that too many people may use non-free software if we do so.
We couldn't act like this even if we wanted to. Users have plenty of
information about non-free software with or without our contribute,
and even if we stopped building precompiled debs of non-free software,
we couldn't stop others (and companies) from doing it.
So, how could we make non-free software hidden, or harder to install?
Regards,
--
Davide G. M. Salvetti - IW5DZC [JN53fr] - <http://www.linux.it/%7Esalve/>
<http://www.gnu.org/> * <http://www.debian.org/> * <http://www.linux.org>
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