Re: removing links from main to contrib|non-free (was: weekly policy summary)
***** GB => Goswin Brederlow
GB> If the suggests to non-free or contrib are depreciated by policy
GB> or even forbidden, debian will loose much.
This is just a matter of opinion. ;-)
GB> Non-free is a part of Debian in some way,
Our Social Contract disagrees:
>--------------------------------------------------------------------<
5. Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards
We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs that
don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created
"contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for this software.
The software in these directories is not part of the Debian system,
although it has been configured for use with Debian. We encourage CD
manufacturers to read the licenses of software packages in these
directories and determine if they can distribute that software on their
CDs. Thus, although non-free software isn't a part of Debian, we
support its use, and we provide infrastructure (such as our
bug-tracking system and mailing lists) for non-free software packages.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------<
?«The software in these directories is not part of the Debian system,
although it has been configured for use with Debian.?», sounds pretty
clear to me.
GB> Its no harm done by refering to non-free.
I'm afraid we can't have a completely free OS if it refers to non-free
in its suggestion links. It's not a matter of harm done, it's a
matter of building a free universal operating system or not.
GB> Yeah, from freshmeat, where thers a link to the homepage. Then I
GB> download the thing and after two hours downloading I see that its
GB> already on the non-free CD, so I don't have to fiddle around with the
GB> rpm file.
Look on the non-free CD first, and you'll save your time. ;-)
>> 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.
GB> But Debian is for the users and not for some word written on a html
GB> page. :)
That is the Social Contract, not ?«some word written on a html page?».
>> So, how could we make non-free software hidden, or harder to install?
GB> By evely removing all suggests to non-free or contrib. :)
Wrong answer. :-)
The ease of installation wouldn't change a bit that way (you could
still dpkg --install as before), what would really change is the
source of non-free existance information, which should be our least
problem.
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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