Re: Non-Constitutional Voting Procedure

[Taketoshi Sano <sano@debian.org>]

Hi.

In <[🔎] 20001025143223.B31248@sarge.private.brainfood.com>,
  on Wed, 25 Oct 2000 14:32:23 -0500,
 "Ean R . Schuessler" <ean@brainfood.com> wrote:

> Well, but I would say the opportunity for free distribution is a big
> incentive. If we distribute questionably licensed software then we are 
> removing any motivation for them to change their license. It is by

Really ?  What do you think about many packages which has been moved
from non-free to main ?  Do you think that they has been just done 
independent of the work done by their package maintainer ?

If we remove any motivation from authors to change their license
to be DFSG free by distributing them in non-free, then I suspect
no packages had moved from non-free into main, or worth, some
packages had moved from main into non-free.

There may be packages which changed from main into "non-distributable",
but I suppose the number of "non-free to main" is greater than "main to 
non-free" as for the Debian pacakges.

> showing prejudice against their licenses, and thus slowing the adoption of
> their software, that we will most quickly coerce companies into good licenses.

What in your sight is always only the companies, isn't it ?

Authors of non-free softwares don't have to be companies at all.
There are many countries in the world where the promotion of the
free software is just started.  And in some countries there are
many people who think the definition of "free" includes the 
"non-commercial" license.  Now we are in the battle to evangelize
our definition of "Free" (the DFSG), and the existence of the non-free
area is the useful means of getting the trust from those authors.

Do you want to make this operation more difficult all over the world ?
Or can you work for all of us to do this operation, better and faster ?

> > Also, will there be apt-getteable archives of the package we remove from
> > non-free ? or will they just be available in rpm format ?
> 
> Well, there are a few posibilities. I will personally volenteer some 
> equipment and bandwidth to distribute some core, pain-in-the-ass non-free
> software such as Netscape and the JDK. But, even then, I hesitate to see
> why Sun and Netscape should get a free ride. They are big companies and
> should provide an apt-gettable source of their materials. For the short
> term, however, I see that we must provide users with a way to get at certain
> critical non-free software.

Again, what in your sight is always only the companies, isn't it ?

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