Re: Negative Summary of the Split Proposal
Chris Lawrence <quango@watervalley.net> writes:
> 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 name was associated with shoddy, outdated tools a couple of years ago.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?)
What you're basically telling us is that unless we let a contrived
fear of a phantasmatic backlash from a imaginary "public", who is
mislead and under-informed, influence our decisions, we are promoting a
fallacy. Can you see why this live of argument has not brought you
much success here?
I think there are other ways to argue against this split, but by
fear-mongering about a "public backlash" you are not likely to
generate much support. We are not concerned with what Evan Leibovitch
or Ransom Love, or whoever over at Ziff-Davis will say about us, they
are not our users and have never contributed anything to our project.
We have a contract with our users to be 100% Free Software and that is
what our goal should be. We are not building a market, we are serving
our users, and thru our work, ourselves.
> 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...
The Social Contract says that Debian is 100% Free Software. As it
stands presently, there is not clear separation in the eyes of users
between the free and non-free parts of Debian. The maintenance of
non-free archives and mirrors was a favor to users, and we could
safely do that when the distribution and package selection mechanisms
made the distinction clearly.
The distinction used to be more pronounced in dselect, but with new
packaging tools such as apt that distinction is no longer made in the
eyes of users. Also, with more users with high-bandwidth connections,
and alternative modes of retrieving Debian Software, the split is no
longer as obvious, because there is no difference between grabbing a
Debian package, and a non-Debian, non-free package.
For this reason, the first item in the Social Contract is
jeopardized. Not out of our negligence, or because somehow it's not
something we can uphold in the harsh reality of late 20th century
capitalism and the explosion of the Linux Industry. Rather, it's
because the distribution mechanisms have changed. The friction which
we counted on to make the distinction between Debian, and non-Debian
packages is no longer there.
If the solution to this issue requires more work, then we are bound by
our Social Contract to undertake that work. Obviously the best
solution is one which provides the proper distinction, and I think the
more radical the distinction the better, with the least amount of
increased workload.
For this reason I think that solution "1", create nonfree.debian.org,
is the best solution. Perhaps we should change it to
"contrib.debian.org" in order to better indicate that it is outside of
Debian and not part of it, but something which we provide some
logistical support for. But I haven't thought that thru to the end
yet, so opinions are appreciated.
--
Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>
Free Scheme/Lisp Software http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
I say woe unto those who are wise in their own eyes, and yet
imprudent in 'dem outside -Sizzla
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