Re: The "Free" vs. "Non-Free" issue
On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 11:13:07 -0500, Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org> said:
>> We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software
>> community. We will place their interests first in our
>> priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in
>> many different kinds of computing environment.
>>
>> We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs
>> that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have
>> created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for this
>> software.
> Perhaps my command of English is shaky, but I notice more than one
> tense in this context of yours. Note that "We will be guided" is a
> promise. Note that "We have created" is purely informational, and
> not some promise we made that needs to be weaseled out of.
I think that is ignoring the fact that providing the archives,
and supporting it so well, has lead to a lot of people to depend on
them. I know a number of people who have embraced Debian because of
our prior emphasis on "Usefulness". Pulling non-free without
providing a transition path is yaking the rug out from under them.
>> You may think that the promise inherent is the social contract is
>> not stated strongly enough and that we can, umm, weasel out of it,
>> but I think that is not quite acting in good faith.
> I don't think that laboring under the delusion that non-free is not
> a disgrace helps to place the interests of users first in our
> priorities.
Non free is a disgrace? I see. I guess I do not feel ashamed
by angband and tome, so I do not ascribe to this particular
prejudice.
> You may not remember this, but long ago we used to use PGP and
> non-free ssh as part of our Debian work. The netscape packages were
> quite well cared-for. The quality of non-free was on par with our
> free software.
> I encourage you to try this experiment. Upload all future angband
> packages built for m68k only. Then observe the following details:
> how long it takes for someone to upload an i386 deb; how often the
> i386 deb is built incorrectly; how often the i386 deb doesn't work
> at all; how many user complaints and bug reports you receive about
> the package being out of date because the users are only checking
> the i386 version; how many user complaints and bug reports you
> receive regarding the non-functionality of the i386 deb; and so on.
Need I point out that I can find you similar software in main
which have RC BUGS WITH PATCHES THAT HAVE NOT BEEN ADDRESSED?
Sure, non-free is not auto built. There are parts of non-free
that are not well maintained (just like there are parts of main that
are ill maintained).
All these argumets seem to support the proposition that we
provide better support to non-free, not less.
Personally, if you have bugs you have found in angband or
tome, you'll find that they are taken care of just as fast as bugs in
make or flex.
manoj
--
Too much is not enough.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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