Re: Negative Summary of the Split Proposal
On Jul 03, John Goerzen wrote:
> Note that we do not support non-free software; the Contract explicitly
> acknowledges that it is not a prt of Debian. We merely acknowledge
> that it is possible to use non-free software on Debian ("support its use").
Doublespeak. We provide support infrastructure for non-free software
that is the same as that we provide for free software. We may not
intellectually "support" its use, but we certainly provide physical
support for it. You can search for non-free packages on
www.debian.org. Apt will even install them if you put them in your
sources.list. Apparently we both support and don't support non-free
software. :-)
Support is such a loaded (and nonspecific) word that it's one that is
best avoided in many contexts, this one being a prime example.
> Sheesh! Again a marketdroid argument. When are we going to stop
> seeing things like this? Are you seriously advocating that we let
> marketing take control rather than quality or ethical concerns?
[I'll pass on being the "you" here. :-)]
I think it is reasonable for us to seek to project a positive image
about our project. That doesn't mean being slaves to marketing, but
we ought to at least be conscious that our actions as a group can
affect how others perceive the project. To ignore that fact of life
is a fallacy. (Look at Slackware, which is a PR nightmare because its
name was associated with shoddy, outdated tools a couple of years ago.
It may be a great distribution in 1999, but who's going to try it?)
Is it ethical to use non-free software? Probably not, but it's more
ethical than letting your dog crap on someone else's lawn. Maybe even
your own if the UPS guy has to walk across it. It's certainly more
ethical than writing it. My choice to use Netscape doesn't hurt
anyone else (certainly nobody in the free software community...).
Hell, it helps people who have stock in AOL (including many people who
own mutual funds who invest in AOL), AOL's employees, Netscape's
employees, the people who work on Mozilla, and the people who will use
Mozilla when it's stable. I can sleep at night using and maintaining
non-free software.
Surely the fact we are the only distribution ethical enough to divide
our software *in the first place* into free/non-free is enough; we
really don't need to create any extra work for our FTP maintainers,
our mirror maintainers, the website maintainers, the apt group,
our users...
Chris
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