Re: General Resolution. Copied and Pasted Message from Developers Archive
I guess we have all been stewing over this. One unintended result may be
that Debian will look as though it is strong-arming people in non-free to
accept the GNU-idea of free software. That is, "Change to our licensing
agreement or we will dump you from the Debian site." It must be understood
that, whether intended or not, Debian is a huge presence in the Linux
community. It is influential and it should be respectful of its influence
in ways that, say Microsoft, is not of theirs.
Arthur H. Edwards
712 Valencia Dr. NE
Abq. NM 87108
(505) 256-0834
On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Antonio Rodriguez wrote:
> The following is a message that I grabbed from the archives of
> developers' list, the ones with the power of vote about this or any
> other resolution. There are ideas here that are worth reading, so I
> decided to post it. Since it is in public domain, I hope Manoj doesn't
> mind.
> Antonio.
> %%%%%%%%%%% *************************************************
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%*******************************************
> %%%%%%%%%%% *************************************************
>
> Hi,
>
> So far, we have always packages ``All the packages fit to
> package''. The only criteria has been that we be legally allowed to
> package software, and that some one finds it useful enough to spend
> the effort packaging it. Indeed, when we could not distribute the
> binaries, we created sourece only packages, or installer packages.
>
> It was, IMHO, a judicious mix of free software evengelism, and
> one of creating the *BEST* distribution, with all the useful
> software we could package. I could almost always find any software
> available out there already packaged for debian. We were the
> inclusive distribution, and we showed our comitment to free software
> by only bundling free software on our CD's, and our commitment to
> useful distribution and our social contract by packaging and
> supporting the other software that did not meet our guidelines but
> was useful to our users.
>
> I like the fact we can cater to people who like free software
> (never put non-free in your apt sources), as well as to people who
> just want a useful distribution -- and we can, gently, try to win
> them over to free alternatives wehre such exist. We offer a choice,
> we do not impose. We evangelize, we do not force.
>
> Those who think this does not help Debian obviously have not
> really thought it through.
>
> This GR is disturbin. It throws away the promises made in the
> social contract. It is exclusionary. It reduces the utility of Debian
> to a number of users, and thus would marginalize us into a non
> entity. And it makes us committed to the free distribution, as
> opposed to the best free distribution.
>
> I am not convinced that this is a good idea.
>
> manoj
> --
> As I was passing Project MAC, I met a Quux with seven hacks. Every
> hack had seven bugs; Every bug had seven manifestations; Every
> manifestation had seven symptoms. Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and
> hacks, How many losses at Project MAC?
> Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
> 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
> 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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>
>
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