Re: An ammendment (Re: Formal CFV: General Resolution to Abolish Non-Free)
Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
> On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 10:33:17PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> > My proposal does not throw out the social contract. It strengthens
> > it. I fail to see how you can call supporting and spreading non-free
> > software "good, valuable principles." There is no logical or ethical
> > basis for such a statement.
>
> Well, there may be no logical or ethical basis that you'll accept,
> but that's a different matter from there being none at all.
There haven't been any put forth then either, so there you go :-)
> Once more: providing non-free software helps users get their work done,
> and helping users get their work done is a moral good and one of our
> purposes here. Providing non-free software that fits in with the Debian
Perhaps it does. For the sake of the argument, I'll accept in this
case your premise that non-free software helps users get their work
done. Even if I assume that, let us ask this: why does this non-free
software have to be distributed by Debian?
> GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd systems allows users to do more with their existing
> system than they might otherwise, which in turn allows more people to
> use the free system than might otherwise, both of which are moral goods.
But this distribution does not have to be done by Debian, nor does the
fact that Debian does the distribution inevitably lead to more people
using Debian.
> And, lastly, Debian providing all this makes non-free software easier to
> maintain and easier to obtain, and, IMO, making life easier is a moral
> good too.
apt can pull from anywhere.
Apparently your argument boils down to this: can people get non-free
software and maintain it outside of debian.org? I see absolutely no
reason why they cannot.
Reply to: