Re: Removing non-free - reality check.

[Taketoshi Sano <kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp>]

Hi.

 (I remove -devel list as well as the address of Ch.Troestler from cc 
  of this mail. I considered to remove also the address of John, but 
  left it since I don't know if he read -project list. I left -vote
  list also, since this topic is related to coming vote.)

In <[🔎] 87snulum58.fsf@complete.org>,
 at "10 Jun 2000 18:55:15 -0500",
  John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:

> Taketoshi Sano <kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp> writes:
> 
> >  "Does Debian include non-free software?"
> >  "Any of the Debian packages itself doesn't include non-free, No."
> >  "Then users can't use the packages for non-free softwares ?"
> >  "Some un-official packages in contrib can install non-free softwares
> >   very easily.  All you have to do is just to get the software, and
> >   put it on the specific place.  Then the package does all the setup
> >   magically."
> >  "Cool."
> 
> Eventually we could hopefully remove those as well, when the time and
> technology is right.  It doesn't seem politically possible ask for it
> at the moment.

I am agree with that we can eventually remove all of them, becuase
all we need will be done by only pure-free softwares in future.

But to accomplish this target, we have to work on to create, support, 
and maintain the softwares we need. And here, we can create the free 
software to ask the authors of non-free to change his license on it as 
well as just to create the alternative from the scratch. No, I can't
say it will work in every case, but there are some cases in fact this
worked for us.

As many people pointed out, there are authors who just don't understand
why our "Free" ideal is important. And in that case, we have the chance
to persuade the authors of the value of "Free Software".

There are some non-free software material which can not be distributed
at all. And they are [packaged] as "installer" in contrib area.
On the other side, there are some non-free software material which can
not be sold, but can be distributed freely, with the complete machine-
readable source code. And they are packaged in non-free area.
If you will try to persuade the author of them in order to change their
licenses, then which do you think has more possibility for us ?

The task of promoting the Free Softwares, is not the easy, has taken very 
long time, and will take some more time as you see. We have to promote 
the idea of Free Softwares, not only for our users, but also for authors 
(or upstream maintainers) of softwares. And the existence of our contrib
and non-free area has worked for us in order to promote our ideal for 
some authors.

Do you wish to kill the possibility to promote the ideal of Free Softwares
for the developers outside of Debian ? 
Do you wish to destroy the chance of reincarnation of softwares ?

Time is on our side now. Mozilla is the good example of this reincarnation,
and we have already changed the license of some softwares.

Our task is to enlighten, change and improve the world including authors
of softwares as well as users, with the ideal of "Free Software".
This will grow and promote "the Free Software Comunity".

Thanks.

-- 
  Taketoshi Sano: <sano@debian.org>,<sano@debian.or.jp>,<kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp>