On Sun, Dec 05, 1999 at 04:11:03PM -0500, David Blackman wrote:
> Debian is a wonderful development model. Anyone can
> contribute to it.
Remember this statement ;)
> And everything must be Free Software, Free Software in the sense that
> it must be both open source, and modifiable. Open sourced program
> FooBarX, which doesn't allow modified binaries, is placed in
> non-free, for the user to download, but it's not part of the standard
> distribution. Program FooBarZ is closed source, binaries only, it's
> not part of Debian.
FooBarX wouldn't be in non-free as a binary package. It would be there
as pine is, as a package that installs the sources and tells you how to
compile them.
FooBarZ might have a script written for it that runs the closed-source
installer, sets up config files, puts files in their proper places, and
so on. But if it's binary-only, chances are it doesn't allow free
redistribution either, so it couldn't be packaged. Note that the newer
Netscapes are packaged, due to licensing changes that allow free
redistribution.
Note that even Open Source programs, with free redistribution, may end
up in non-free if the license says you can't charge to redistribute it
or if it's "for non-commercial purposes" only. Or Open Source programs
that are completely free but could infringe on some patent are in
non-free.
Why is this done? So it's simple to tell if you can charge for your
custom Debian CDs. Include non-free and you probably can't. Include
contrib and you can, but contrib packages won't work without getting the
non-free packages from somewhere.
> So what's wrong with this? Debian is supposed to be a
> completely open source operating system, where everything adheres to
> the Debian free software guidelines. This is an operating system where
> I could replace every instance of Debian with foobar, and sell it for
> three thousand bucks a copy. And doesn't non-free have all those open
> source/closed binary packages, and all the packages under actual
> patents? And isn't a 4k script that I apt-get, which downloads and
> installs netscape for me in Debian friendly directories, just as good
> as including the 17 meg binary on the CD?
>
> No it's not.
This paragraph makes little sense. The first half points out that you
can fork Debian, true. Then you point out non-free, which is not part of
the Debian distribution because you can't do that. Then you mention the
netscape installer script, and say that's not good enough. But you
forget to mention that the only alternative is to have no support for
netscape at all (pre-the-license-changing, of course).
> Take this hypothetical conversation:
>
> Okay, I've just installed Debian/GNU Linux (Don't forget the GNU!), it
RMS is right, the proper name is GNU/Linux because it's a Linux kernel
with GNU system utilities. Neither component alone is actually a
functional operating system.
> only took me 3 hours to get through all those cryptic installation
> questions. now where's my full featured web browser?
> <Well, either you've got small broken browsers (arena, gozilla),
> or a broken version of Netscape called Mozilla.
Netscape != Mozilla. Also, remember that Mozilla isn't even in beta yet.
> Isn't Netscape available for Linux?
> <I>Yes, but it's not Free, so you need to download it. </I><BR>
Or find someone who messed around with all the licensing issues and made
a non-free CD (or at least as much of one as is allowed).
If you feel that strongly about it, propose on debian-policy that
non-free should be split into non-free-redistributable and
non-free-nonredistributable, or make non-free CDs and start distribution
them. Just complaining doesn't help.
> Now, can I edit my MS Office docs?
> You might be able to look at them, but definitely not edit them!
> What about this StarOffice thing I keep hearing about? <
> That's a 50 meg download.
> And WordPerfect 8?
> 25 meg download.
Do their licenses premit redistribution? Or is the only authorized
distributor Sun or Corel.
Reading the licenses, the WP license does not allow any redistribution,
so Debian cannot distribute it. i don't have a copt of Sun's version of
StarOffice, but the old license didn't allow redistribution either. So
it'd be kind of hard for Debian to include these programs...
> I want to hear sound, I just type sndconfig, like in RedHat? <BR>
> No, we don't include the sound modules, you'll need to
> recompile the kernel by hand.
i've heard vague rumors that this has changed in the kernel-image-x-y-zz
packages. But the reason the sound drivers are left out of the base
system kernel is to reduce the number of floppies required for a floppy
install. RedHat doesn't care much about floppy installs (which is their
perogative) so size isn't as much of a concern.
> What's a kernel? Whatever, when can I start editing graphics
> for my web site?
> Well, GIMP is the greatest piece of software ever, but it
> doesn't include GIF & TIFF support in Debian, so you'll need to
> download GIMP-nonfree. But after all, we're on a holy war to burn all
> GIFS anyway, use PNGs and JPEGS.
Find someone that provides non-free on a CD for you. Even though the
patent situation with that is ugly.
> Where's KDE? My friend at work uses it, it's so nice and easy. <BR>
> You see, the QT widget set wasn't under a Free license, so we
> yanked it, but now it's under a Free license, but we still have issues
> with KDE, so you'll have to use GNOME.
As soon as KDE figures out the licensing so that the interaction between
the QPL and the GPL doesn't prohibit distribution, it'll be in Debian.
> And my TNT2/VOODOO3/G400 will work under this X thing right?
> 30 megs.
Get a potato CD. slink is slightly out of date because it's _stable_.
The Debian developers have realized that this isn't all that good of an
excuse, and they're planning on ways to speed things up.
> Get the picture? Here's approximatley 150 megs of downloads so far (kernel
> sources + KDE + QT + SO51 + WP8 + X335). Add on top of this the lack
> of a packaged, up-to-date system, (Even Slackware is up to kernel 2.2.12, X335, with KDE and GNOME, compared to Debian, this is light years ahead) with a recent version of X, or
> a recent kernel, and you begin to wonder why people are still using
> Debian.
Potato WILL be out soon. And it will be one of the most stable systems
you can find when it is declared stable.
> It's simple -- because we're a bunch of techno-snobs. Debian's
> hard to use, and we like it that way.
Go Straw-Man argument! For those of you who may not know, a staw-man
argument is where you attribute some postition or attitude to your
opponent, even if not true, and then attack the opponent based on that.
I'll be ignoring anything that depends on this premise.
> We'll leave it to Corel to make Debian easy. We don't WANT everyday
> users. We like Debian the way it is. We like feeling superior,
> adhering to a higher standard of Free, and the warm and fuzzy feeling
> we get from whizzing around a cryptic console in front of a newbie.
"adhering to a higher standard of Free" if the only true statement in
that paragraph.
> Lately I've been thinking about forking Debian, into DWA,
> meaning Debian Without Attitude. We'll drop the attitude, and the
> pretenses, about what Free means, and get licensing deals with Corel,
> Netscape, and Sun, to include Wordperfect, Communicator, and
> Staroffice.
Fine, that's perfectly allowed, at least for the main and contrib
sections. Be sure to check all the licenses in non-free to make sure you
won't get your pants sued off by the authors of those programs.
> We'll make the install process less cryptic
You can do this without forking Debian. I'm positive the developers
would include it if someone went and did this, as long as it is
DFSG-free. If you won't license it that way, then go ahead and fork.
> forget the Debian philosophy, that the only way to learn is by doing
> it the hard way.
That's not the Debian philosophy.
> I'm going to get flamed for this.
All the replies i've seen to this point were very polite. I'm trying to
be as well. Flaming accomplishes little.
> We want to leave out KDE.
No we don't. But the current licensing conflict doesn't allow any
redistribution at all, because you can't satisfy both the QPL and GPL at
the same time. As soon as this is fixed (which is being worked on), KDE
will be Debianized.
> We don't want Joe Blow to start with Debian, if he's not man enough to
> face up to Debian, he can go buy, ("Ha! Buy!", we Debian snobs say)
> Red Hat.
False. But you don't care, you're just flaming at this point.
--
finger for GPG public key.
29 Nov 1999 - new email address added to gpg key
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