Re: GR: Removal of non-free
On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 11:33:23AM +0100, Emmanuel Charpentier wrote:
> >You seem to technically qualify for the 'point your
> >/etc/apt/sources.list somewhere else' bit. Why do you worry about this
> >at all?
>
> Because I somehow doubt that the current technical and social
> infrastructures behind Debian "non-free" can be currently duplicated
> "somewhere else".
setting up APT repositories is trivial. Even dinstall and buildds can
and have been setup by individuals these days, as can the BTS. Even
easier would be to just start something similar to 'alioth', i.e. a
sourceforge like thing.
I guess that unsopported backports are downloaded and used a few orders
of magnitude more often than the 'official' non-free part. You don't get
bug tracking for these and you have to setup your sources.list. Still,
a lot of people find backports quite convenient.
> >Note that 'non-free' is not, and has never been, part of Debian.
>
> This may be true from a lawyer's point of view.
It is one of the core principles of the project.
> And that's fine with me. For practical purposes, the close
> association of Debian an the "non-free" non-Debian part is "good
> enough".
This statement is just as 'worrying' and 'frightening' to me as this
proposed ballot is for you. If users see non-free as part of debian 'for
practical purposes', I guess it's high time to change that. That's my
personal opinion only, of course, and in no way the offcial opinion of
the project.
> I probably won't fake myself a Debian Developper : I'm 47, have a
> heavy real-world workload and a family, and my coding days are behind
> me. What I write is mostly small statistical software, shared with the
> statistical community through the relevant channels (the R
> depository), when time comes.
If you want to make a difference, you can help out nevertheless: Make a
critical statistical investigation of the current contents of non-free.
That would be tremendously useful for other Developers when it comes to
voting. For example, you could find out what is the distribution of the
following:
- commercial software with no free replacement
- commercial software with a free but deficient and non-adequate
replacement (perhaps split that up into actively developped and
stalled free replacements)
- commercial software with a working free replacement
- installers for binary-only drivers/software
- language support with non-free fonts and the like
- games
- etc
Having a look at the distribution of non-i386 packages would be nice to
see, as packages don't get autobuilt. If you can judge that, an
assertion on how well non-free packages are maintained with respect to
normal packages in main would also be useful.
[snip 'debian-has-votes-but-is-still-like-a-stalinistic-regime-as-its-
developers-are-brainwashed']
I won't comment on that. If you want to discuss, please come up with
arguments and not propaganda.
> a) How do you (did you ?) measure this "low percentage" ?
No, it's an educated guess. In '93, most people couldn't surf the web
without proprietary software. Before gnupg, we had to use the
proprietary PGP to sign uploads or mails. Today these fundamental
problems are gone. Of course, there is still software for which no free
counterpart exists, but close to 100% of users can do close to 100% of
their daily workstation work with Free Software (as soon as sarge
releases with Open Office).
Again, that's just a guess. See my part above about helping to quantify
the problems.
> b) The proposition is not about *evaluating* such a move. It is about
> *doing* the move, and postulates that the evaluation has been done and
> showed that the "non-free" section has no longer practical uses or
> "enough" (definition ?) users to bother.
The evaluation will be performed individually by the Developers when
voting. As I said, insightful studies around this case will be very
helpful for the process. The people proposing the vote have done their
evaluation already, of course.
[snip some more pseudo-'we are going to be opressed' rhetoric]
> Again, I appreciated the support (infrastructure, bug tracking system,
> etc ..) offered by the non-free section. I would sorely miss it, if
> only for a couple of packages. And I think I'm not alone.
As a first step, you could register 'www.non-free.com' or something
similar, buy a box (you don't need a big hard drive, fortunately :) )
and call for help.
> >As a matter of fact, I know a couple of very talented people who
> >refuse to become Debian Developers because of clause #5 in the Social
> >Contract and the distribution of non-free on our ftp-servers. So it's
> >not just about losing people (I wouldn't shear a tear about losing
> >you as a user, after your Stalin remark above, regardless of how many
> >'PS' you wrote), it's also about possibly gaining people dropping
> >non-free.
>
> Okay : now your point is clear :
That was just one aspect of the whole issue, not 'the point'
Don't expect another post from me today, I rather start fixing bugs now.
Michael
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