On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:24:27AM +0200, Ivo Wever wrote (slightly reformatted): > Sam wrote: > > >And here's a third - http://www.vicnet.net.au/~rpds/ > > > >There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in > >Australia who get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are > >members of the Rural Peninsula Disability Support group - they are > >provided computers and pay $11 Australian a month for three hours > >access per day. This is the kind of charitable project which can > >*never* afford costly server hardware or software - were it not for > >the Debian project, we would not be able to run something like this, > > I'm sorry, but this argument isn't valid as a defense for Debian in > particular. You could use any other linux distro for this server; I'm > certain you could find a similar project somewhere in the world where > someone uses Redhat or Suse or ... True. But Sam uses Debian. He (apparantly) chose to. Lots of other people have chosen Debian over the other alternatives. The reasons for his choice are not necessarily related to elderly people. It could be freedom, stability, ease of maintenance, performance, price, openess, the nice logo or whatever... > Frankly I am appalled by someone trying to use an emotional argument, > involving elderly disabled people, to support Debian. Using an emotional argument is not necessarily a bad thing (elderly people or not). Debian *is* different, *because* of the emotions built into the social contract. After all, freedom can very much be considered emotional... > I guess we should rethink Debian if it turned out some neo-nazi group > used our software on their servers? Of course not. And I'm not willing to rethink Debian even when elderly people use it. -- Karl E. Jørgensen karl@jorgensen.com www.karl.jorgensen.com I'm currently out trying to find myself. If I should get back before I return, please keep me here.
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