Re: The proposed GR: catch-22

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Chris Lawrence <lawrencc@debian.org> writes:

> about a year ago, seems to be bolstered by its supporters with two
> mutually exclusive arguments:
> 
> 1. It will have minimal effects since people will still be able to use
> non-free software.
> 
> 2. It will have far-reaching effects since Debian (the corporate
> entity) will expend fewer resources in support of people wanting to
> use non-free software.

I do not make the case for #2.  In fact, I don't thik I've seen anyone
make that case.

> isn't really the case since the most likely result of a dropping of
> non-free will be a "grey zone" of debs from random sources, a la RPM

There's nothing stopping people from taking the current non-free and
maintaining it.

> I'm really rather surprised that people who don't do anything with
> non-free packages are burdened by their presence.  The incremental
> cost of maintaining the BTS and other tools (lintian reports, etc.)
> for a few dozen packages can't be all that high.  I submit that it's

If you would, please reread my proposal.  I am not proposing it
because of the use of our resrouces, which is, as you say, not that
high.