On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 12:16:15PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > One effect of removing non-free from Debian is that we can't use all the > infrastructure we already have for non-free -- the archive, the BTS, the > buildds, and everything else (our n-m process, the PTS, whatever). This > means that for the bits of non-free that are still needed, will have to > have the infrastructure reimplemented for them, or will have to do without > it. > > Both of those are bad for Debian -- reimplementing infrastructure sucks up > time and energy of maintainers on work that doesn't benefit free software; > and reducing the available support for our users who need non-free software > makes their lives more painful, or encourages them to switch to a different > distribution. Not necessarily. A reimplementation of some Debian infrastructure might actually result in better tools. We've had years to learn from the mistakes made in our current infrastructure. If the people setting up the non-free infrastructure saw to it that their work was freely licensed, then Free Software *would* benefit. There would be new tools available that didn't exist before. It is also possible that the non-free section isn't getting everything it could out of the current infrastructure. The buildds come to mind. > One way of demonstrating that the effort is trivial is to setup all that > infrastructure. I don't think the triviality of effort is an interesting question, but YMMV. > > Surely, if the proposal passes, those who want the infrastructure will > > create it, if it is needed/important enough? Asking those who disagree > > with its use to create it seems unfair. > > People who disagree with the use of a separate non-free repository surely > wouldn't be arguing for its creation, though, no? That's what I said, and Manoj accused me of dissembling. <shrug> -- G. Branden Robinson | Men are born ignorant, not stupid. Debian GNU/Linux | They are made stupid by education. branden@debian.org | -- Bertrand Russell http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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