On Sat, Jul 03, 1999 at 04:34:15PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Not at all true! He was, IIRC, perfectly happy with the suggestion
> that non-free repositories be listed in source.list as long as they
> were commented out *by default* -- or even commented out only if
> someone responded "yes" to a question like, "would you like to see
> only truly free software".
>
> I think that a question "Would you like to see non-free packages?"
> would be an ineffective solution, since only truly committed idealists
> like me would answer no. It would be like asking children, "Should we
> offer you some candy before your meal?"
We're not dealing with children. We're dealing with responsible people
and I would rather assume that they should be educated as to the options
available to them and the consiquences positive and negative of certain
choices. What's the point of people choosing free software if they
didn't choose it but rather had it forced on them?
People call you a socialist, this is exactly why. Who are you to tell me
what my morals should be? Give me the information and the tools, then
let me decide. You'll find that I, like many am not a purist. Given a
choice between a non-free software package that does what I need and the
free software purist option of simply doing without, I'll probably
grudgingly use the non-free package until there's a usable alternative.
A great example is this email. It is composed in mutt which I learned
more than a year ago now because pine was non-free. It's still not as
easy to configure but I asked for help and got it. Now I frequently
offer people the same help I got.
Further, the last email you read written by me was signed with PGP.
Horribly non-free. Well with the recent release of the newst versions of
gpg, it's now usable. This email is signed with gpg.
Consider me corrupt if you like because I won't suffer when a suitable
free program isn't available to replace the non-free one works for now
until the free program works, I won't be hurt by it. However when you
try to take away my right to choose that non-free package because you
don't like me using it, I get annoyed. You don't have to go out of your
way to tell me it's there, but don't go out of your way to make sure I
don't find out that I don't have to do without.
> I would like to have a way that the GNU Project can recommend the
> Official Debian system, without recommending the non-free packages.
> Some people such as Carter want to recommend the non-free packages
> too. For the sake of compromise, I've designed proposals that give
> them a way to do what they want, as well as giving us the way to do
> what we want.
Acknowledging that non-free exists is a far cry from a recommendation.
The fact of the matter is that you objected to ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER of
non-free's existance on the webpages, in the main archive, in the main
packages, in apt's configuration, and anywhere else.
Here's the problem...
Say for a moment I'm a new user. I find Debian's web page. I read the
social contract and I see a distribution committed to free software and
high quality. I read also right in that social contract that support
exists for non-free software if I need it for something.
Okay, sounds cool. I'll be able to install netscape which is binary
only and therefore quite non-free. But I'll know it's non-free and
because I'm not an idiot I know that mozilla will eventually provide a
free alternative that doesn't crash frequently. But I won't end up
with any non-free software without knowing it's non-free, which is what
I want since I'm at least supportive of free software.
I order my Debian CDs and they arrive. I install the packages from
them and ... no netscape! But then, I also read that non-free isn't
and cannot be part of Debian, so of course it's not there. Now I set
about the task of finding non-free software like netscape.
I check the files in /usr/doc---nope, no references.
I check apt's configuration file---nope, nothing.
I check the web pages---no references, search function returns nothing.
I nose around the ftp site with my nice free ftp client, nothing.
At this point I'm thinking where the hell is netscape? Why did Debian
claim that they at least supported non-free software if I chose to use
it. But it's not there. I can't find it anywhere. So I go and
install Redhat or worse, brand all free software supporters as fanatics
and go back to windoze which at least lets me use the software I want,
even if I want netscape when M$ wants me to have IE.
Essentially what I see is that you said you wanted one thing, then you
tried to convince us to do something else.
You said you wanted us to make it easier for people who did not want
non-free software to not be bothered by it. You also said that you did
not wish to change our social contract or even tell us that we should
change it---though I recall you did admit that you'd be happy if we did
that ourselves.
What you then asked us to do is exactly what you said you wouldn't ask us
to do. You want us to STOP supporting non-free software. You want us to
take it off our main servers. You want us to remove ALL mention of it
from anyplace it can be found. You want us to make it so the only way
someone can find it is by asking someone who already knows where it is.
All in the hopes that people will then make a decision not to use certain
non-free programs which appear to be not available as far as they can
see.
You want us to hide non-free software from our users. Doing so would be
a direct violation of our social contract which says we'd support our
users' use of non-free software. Of course we could change the social
contract. We could, but I don't want to stick around to clean up the PR
nightmare it would create the second someone like slashdot or LWN reports
that Debian has just voted to no longer provide support for things like
netscape or xv.
I think it's about time the people supporting this change stop pretending
it's anything less than a change of the social contract. If we do this
without changing the social contract first, the Debian project fails to
deliver what we promise.
An essential part of freedom is choice. You want to take that away.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer
PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First!
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<Davide> how bout a policy policing policy with a policy for changing the
police policing policy
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