I maintain a non-free package, the unicorn driver, which is reallyalmost GPLed, except for its dependence on a soft ADSL library where noteven the manufacturer of the hardware has the source for. [...]
The discussion on -legal about this starts with http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200211/msg00076.html
There seemed to be a few "not sure" comments along the way. It may be worth asking -legal again, including whether it is possible to package the non-softlib part in contrib? Other interesting things would be trying to find someone who can produce a free software alternative (reverse engineering perhaps?), and what licensing@gnu.org has to say about this case and whether any of it can be free software.
Anyway, i as debian devel want to be free to use the debian infrastructure to distribute this driver, and the use of the BTS to communicate with myusers, which find the the package usefull, even if it is not in main.
Why do you want to use debian mirrors and BTS? If there is good support for using another donated infrastructure, would that suffice?
So, the aim of this whole discussion is about what kind of work can be done inside of debian. These people with their non-free GR, apart from loosing everyone's time, are trying to impose on me what i can work on inside of debian, without even bothering to look at the issues indetail, and answering arguments made against their case. I guess some ofthe contributors may not even be debian devels.
The question is fairly basic, I agree. Why should work which doesn't help to develop a free software operating system be done inside the debian project? Do we already "impose" on people what can be distributed as part of debian by using the DFSG?
I think you are mostly wrong about "without even bothering to look at the issues in detail". Many of the participants here (with a range of viewpoints) are active on -legal and look at these sorts of issues frequently. Maybe some of us have missed issues about ceasing non-free support which you should point out, or maybe you consider them with different importance.
Finally, you are as capable as any of us to check who is a DD. Why guess?
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