Re: Another Non-Free Proposal
On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 03:00:50PM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
> I am not a DD (yet), and this is not a GR proposal (yet). However, I'm
> requesting comments on it, and maybe it'll be more tenable to people
> more reluctant to remove non-free.
Thanks for posting this. I think it's probably the best statement
of what this non-free proposal might be about that I've seen
to date.
> PROPOSAL 1
> -------- -
>
> Whereas,
> the Debian Project exists to create a distribution of free software;
>
> many Developers do not consider it moral or equitable to provide,
> freely, our project's resources to projects who are unwilling or
> unable to provide their code freely to the public;
Two issues here: morality, and equitablity.
[*] Morality: can you provide any reference to this moral code?
[*] Equitability: what is the unfairness, specifically
> the importance of non-free software has greatly decreased since the
> founding of the project; and
How do you measure this?
> outside groups have been quite able to provide well-integrated
> software no harder to obtain than that from Debian's own mirror
> network:
I don't know what you're talking about here -- perhaps you should
ennumerate these groups.
The examples I'm aware of fall into two categories:
[*] temporary, development efforts
[*] commercial outfits which limit access to the result.
If it's the latter you're referring to... I think it's hypocritical
to compare what we have in non-free to commercial software. While the
software in non-free doesn't meet our guidelines -- and we can't fully
support it -- we still can package it and distribute it fairly broadly.
This is not the case, in general, for commercial software.
--
Raul
Reply to: