Re: I am ANGRY with Debian.

[cothrige <cothrige@bellsouth.net>]

* Nic James Ferrier (nferrier@tapsellferrier.co.uk) wrote:
> cothrige <cothrige@bellsouth.net> writes:
> 
> > People often seem to resent what looks like a personal political idea
> > getting in the way of the system.  In this case it is suggested that
> > Debian is being petty and fighting over trivial political stuff.
> 
> I am NOT trying to debate the decision to regard GFDL as
> non-free. Although I think the decision is wrong that is NOT what I am
> complaining about.

And likewise, I have no intention of labelling you in particular in
any way.  I really meant my comments in a more general way,
considering the many posts and comments I have read online regarding
this issue.

> However, then taking that decision as an action point to remove all
> the documentation without putting it in elsewhere is simply not good
> enough. 

This has not troubled me much, but I can see your point.  However, I
would say that this really seems to bear less on the decision and more
on the implementation.

> A purely political decision has been taken that substantially changed
> *my* user experience (and that of others I'm sure) without warning and
> people think that's ok?

I think here you have hit a nail on the head.  So often, in these
post-Ubuntu days, we hear about this user experience, and how such
focus on things like openness of drivers, or freedom, is causing us to
lose out to the other guys, i.e. Mac and Windows.  I just don't buy
it.  The user experience is as good as it is *because* people have
insisted on this freedom.  The demand by many that things should be
free has given everyone else the opportunities all down the line to
make sure things could improve.  It is inevitable that as long as the
'politics' of free software remain paramount the user experience will
always improve.  However, the opposite could never be said.

Why are people so quick to throw away the very things that made what
they have possible?  I see it all the time here in America.  We had
freedom of speech, thought and association, and because of it built a
great nation.  Now that we have that great nation the first thing we
all seem to want to get rid of are those ridiculous freedoms of
speech, thought and association.  I just find it very strange.  We
should dance with the date that brought us, and in this case that
means insisting that software be and remain free.

And, another thing I think is funny is that so many talk about Debian
making political decisions (I don't know if that is what you mean
above, but I am inferring it from the context of the rest of the post
and thread) in a case where the real decision was by the authors of
the Emacs docs.  Why in the world does the documentation for a piece
of free software need invariant sections?  There are no invariant
sections in the program itself, so why the docs?  That is the 'purely
political decision' which has caused the problems, and not that of
Debian, at least as I see it.

Patrick