Re: A rebuttal (was: Re: Formal CFV: General Resolution to Abolish Non-Free)
> They neglect to mention that Debian is already highly successful at
> encouraging non-free software authors to relicense, that distributing
> software as non-free rather than part of the distribution itself is
> already a successful disincentive, that often it is the maintainer of the
> non-free package who initiates the discussion even after it's packaged
> for non-free, and that seeing that a package is non-free often in and
> of itself encourages users to look for a free replacement.
Just one example for this: the logcheck package was intially non-free
when I created the first Debian package over a year ago. After about 1
month I contacted the upstream author and explained the situation to
him. He made some very good points why he wanted to keep his license
(which restricted distribution of modified source codes), but the fact
that logcheck was declared as non-free in the Debian project made him
think about it. Then, about 2 months later, he changed the license and
logcheck now is completely free. The power of the Debian user
community....
best greets,
Rene
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