Re: An ammendment (Re: Formal CFV: General Resolution to Abolish Non-Free)
On 13-Jun-00, 01:30 (CDT), John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
> Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:
>
> > On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 03:30:04PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> > > What do we need this in a GR for?
> >
> > To reaffirm the principles you are working to erode.
>
> Your principles are the support and spreading of non-free software?
> Just what is wrong with eroding them?
>
Will you please stop equating "I want to provide the best experience
for our users" with "I support non-free software at the same level
of enthusiasm I support free software". They are not equivalent
statements. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that by identifying
and distributing those non-free programs that our users currently need,
and for which the free alternatives are inadequate, in a way that
highlights their non-freeness, we are in fact doing more to promote free
software than saying "we don't care about your needs" to our users and
telling them there's other places they can go for their packages.
Yes, it's a compromise. But so is your position: if we drop non-free,
then we *will* lose users. Some of those users will switch to a
distribution that includes non-free software, probably without
distinguishing such software, and we lose the ability to woo those users
away from such software. That may be less net harm to community, or it
may be more: I don't know, and neither do you.
Steve
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