Re: The "Free" vs. "Non-Free" issue
On Sun, 2004-01-04 at 21:09, Don Armstrong wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Jan 2004, Mark Brown wrote:
> > I think there's room for something along the lines of "I want to
> > spin non-free off as a separate project". Much of the concern over
> > dropping non-free seems to be about having things just suddenly
> > vanish.
>
> There's nothing in these proposals that would preclude the spinning
> off of non-free as a separate project. If someone wants to create such
> a project, they should just go out and create it.
>
No-one will create it until there is a need to do so; as long as we
provide non-free, there will not be any such need. We have a commitment
to maintain it as long as it is needed (social contract) and we should
abide by that commitment; not chop and change for ideological reasons.
To change the social contract would be a major change in Debian's
character and would also be a violation of a commitment that we have
already made. I don't think that would be any better morally than a
commercial firm's decision to abandon support for a product which was
not sufficiently profitable. In the end, reliability and loyalty to our
users are a lot more important than ideological purity.
The reason for providing non-free is just the same as it ever was: for
the convenience of users who want to use Debian and also need to use
packages that do not meet DFSG requirements. I think it is more
important to care for users' convenience than for FSF purity; if you
want aggressive promotion of free software purity, the FSF exists for
that purpose and has its own archive. Any user who doesn't like
non-free can simply exclude it from his sources.list.
The time to get rid of non-free is when it no longer has any maintained
packages; not until then.
--
Oliver Elphick Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight, UK http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
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"And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."
Deuteronomy 6:5
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