Re: GR: Removal of non-free
> > > I disagree with your choice of "significantly".
> On 2004-01-03 11:46:23 +0000 Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:
> > That's nice. My comment is a result of my experience working
> > on the BTS, on testing and on the archive. Do you have any
> > experience that would back up any opinion you might have on
> > this? Any repeatable measurements? Anything beyond a sincere
> > wish that it's true?
On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 02:10:28PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> I have no measurements to give right now, but you don't either,
He was asking for any of a wide variety of things, including
measurements. You have elected to provide none of those things --
and to focus purely on the measurement aspect of the question.
> despite your experience. You seem to be plucking numbers
> from the air. You are in a better position than me to have
> some interesting numbers, so why not give all of them and put
> your commentary afterwards, instead of making some up? Even
> indicating how to get the interesting numbers would be a great
> use of your experience.
Attempting to measure "hours spent" is fraught with difficulties,
and always winds up being an approximation. These approximations
do have some value, in that a rough idea is better than no idea.
But the fundamental points here are:
You've claimed that non-free, as it currently exists "hinders
debian", but most of your claims seem to be based on false ideas
about why things are in non free, and what people spend their
time on.
Anthony has claimed that stripping non-free out of debian would
likely result in duplicated effort [and, thus, less productive time
available for debian]. He's offered his own experience maintaining
BTS and so on as his reason for thinking this.
Neither point has been proven irrefutably, but one point has a
lot more going for it than the other.
> > Uh, there's nothing special about DDs compared to non-DDs. All
> > it takes is sitting through the n-m process, and given things
> > like sponsorship, it doesn't necessarily even take that. [...]
>
> There is the n-m process. I think that DDs have to know something
> to get through it, as well as spend the time sitting through it.
But drive (motivation and persisntence) has a lot more to do with it
than knowledge.
> > I mean, sure, you might go from 99% of Debian development being
> > on free software to 100%, but if that's 100% of 50 man hours
> > rather than 99% of 100 man hours, that's a loss.
>
> It should not surprise anyone that apparently fictional numbers
> support the arguments.
Ok, here's some numbers for the other side of the argument:
99% of debian developer time is spent on non-free. If we got rid of
non-free, we'd go from 1 man hour spent on the rest of the project
to a million man hours every week.
Um... unfortunately, I find these numbers less convincing than
Anthony's. And, if anything these numbers still support "the other
side of the argument". Perhaps there's more to "the other side of
the argument" than some fictional numbers.
Can you present some more plausible numbers?
[Hint: the numbers don't stand by themselves -- they're estimates
which are being used to describe a real situation.]
> > And if you're assuming that non-free is still important enough
> > to Debian users that someone will maintain infrastructure for it
> > [...]
>
> No. I say let the "bazaar" decide.
You mean, instead of voting on it?
> > I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about this, or why
> > people who aren't willing to try setting up some replacement
> > infrastructure are nevertheless dismissive of how much effort
> > that is.
>
> I'm not sure why it's so hard to understand that it's
> unreasonable to ask people who disagree with the infrastructure
> to set it up.
How is that more unreasonable than asking people who agree with
the infrastructure to dismantle it?
--
Raul
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