Re: Non-Constitutional Voting Procedure
On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 04:08:03AM -0500, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 10:55:22AM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > You miss my point, i am not speaking about big companies but about smaller
> > groups, individuals or research institues or other such.
> If you continue like this, I think you make me change my mind about debian
> and non-free...
>
> > I myself maintain the ocaml package, developped at french INRIA. it was
> > previously distributed under a free but only distribute as pristin source +
> > patch (well no binaries). and couldn't go even in non-free without permission
> > from the author. There are loads of GPLed and other free stuff which depended
> Its a free package but can not even go into non-free? I don't get that.
it was not free, because don't permit the distribution of binaries compiled
from modified source (and adding a debian dir constitute a modification in the
eyes of the lawyers). You cannot fix bug in such a package. Also packages that
depend on it go into contrib. but what if the packages is not even in
non-free, you will have a package depending on a package that is compiled
differently by every user. I don't know what this can make to bug reports.
> > This is no netscape or sun, they distribute rpms of the packages, but simply
> > lack the time for debian packaging (i guess so, also i suspect most of them
> > don't use debian). Sure i could propose as volunteer to package it for them,
> > but i would prefer to do it for debian (well no more a problem since the
> > package is free now).
> Now its free again? Even weirder...
yes, after almost two years, the author changed the licence and it is free
now.
> But I think _you_ didn't get Ean's point. non-free is and never has been
> part of debian, it just happened to be available on Debian's ftp servers. If
> you want to package very-non-free or even-more-non-free software for debian,
> just do it(TM), but you simply have to find another place to put it. Ean
> just offered in his mail (IIRC) a place to put those packages, other people
> will probably also offer things like this, maybe like KDE2 before qt2 was
> fixed. Now whats your problem with that? Packages will move only to a
> different ftp server, they are still available for everybody, only they are
> not on debian machines, to put a little pressure on the authors.
i said it in the original mail, i think i agree with that, but the issue is
(volutarilly ?) obscured by strange ballots and flamming discution.
the original proposal was to remove non-free from debian, and the discution
about what will happen to the software did not happen much, or at least was
only vague. Sure there are individual proposals, and other intentions, but
still it is not clear.
> > There is even a package which i packaged and use personnaly, the author gave
> > its ok to it, but was rejected (even in non-free) due to obscure wording in
> > the licence. The author don't respond anymore to my mails, so i let it be.
> So you put the package on your own machine and install it from there, like
> we all do with lame and co. See, just like Ean proposed, so you finally
> agree with him, but are only a little confused by your own words?
>
> > But then maybe reclassifying what is in non-free can help here. Not all
> > non-free packages are equal.
> Like a little pregnant and a little more pregnant?
No, there are package where you cannot see the source, there are packages
which only can be distributed as source + patch (well it is dfsg free, but
there was talk to change this) there is package that is free in spirit but
non-free because of bad licence wording and the author don't care. There is
package that are free but you cannot use it for commercial purpose. there is
package that is free, but you cannot ship with some other package, there is
package that is free but cannot be used for military research or other such
limitation.
and then there is package like lha, which is non-free, but i think nobody
knows what happened to the author and it is not actively developped anymore
(at least the one in debian). And m68k boot floppies use lha, isn't it ?
you cannot pack them all in the same bag. It was ok for now, because we put
them all in non-free, and told people to check the licence for themself. but
if we remove non-free, what will happen to those, almost free packages. Will
we allow more almost free but non-free packages in main ? will we move them to
contrib ? will we just remove them, let the big one (netscape & co) be
distributed by some volunteer and let forget the other one ?
I am in favor of the removing the reference to non-free in the DFSG, but this
don't mean we have to remove it from the archive all at once immediately like
is proposed. and anyway, if you remove netscape, how big is non-free ?
What i am not happy with is the coup like manner of having done this in late
stage of the potato freeze, during holiday season, and with things escalating
to amendment and counter amendment in an attempt to disinterest or confuse
people until the thing get passed.
I have seen articles claiming that debian is organized in a democratic way
(well we are, not we have a constitution and such), but those methods are not
ok. More akin to what happens in the banana republics.
Friendly,
Sven LUTHER
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