Re: The "Free" vs. "Non-Free" issue
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 10:24:40AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 03:10:59PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > > All I have seen is vague handwaving along the lines of "There may be
> > > people who would prefer to do something else [but I can't think of
> > > anything I'd rather do than keep non-free]".
> >
> > That's probably because you've ignored all of the "what problem is it
> > that we're trying to solve?" content.
On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 04:41:01PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> IMHO, the problem is already solved, that's why we have this poll in the
> first place.
>
> The problem that lead to the inclusion of non-free on the Debian servers
> was as follows: 'We'd like to have a full Free System, but some key
> modules are not there yet. That's why keep this non-free software on our
> servers for as long as needed.'
>
> Now, many years later, apparently a lot of Developers think that the
> problem has been solved and we do not absolutely need to have non-free
> on our servers. A lot disagree with this, of course. That's why we have
> this poll, to find out who has the majority.
This isn't a poll, it's a proposed amendment to the social contract.
That said, non-free includes font support for a number of countries,
quite a bit of documentation which is not in main, and a variety of
obscure communications and document-handling utilities. Why should it
even matter that this isn't important to some developers?
And non-free includes games -- when has "importance" ever been an issue
in that context?
--
Raul
Reply to: