Re: one of the many reasons why removing non-free is a dumb idea
On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 08:20:25PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 12:00:12PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > Please stop wasting my time...but feel free to come back when you have
> > something other than quibbles about word definitions to talk about.
>
> Ah, come on craig. A bit of humor is fine during low traffic periods,
> but you did make a number of mistakes,
you've said that a few times but failed to actually provide any examples.
at most, i made a few small exaggerations and used a few 'poetic' turns
of phrase - but AFAIK, no actual mistakes.
> and this as a response falls incredibly flat.
you mean you really think his quibbling over words was worth the time it took
to read?
it was tediously pedantic and neatly avoided engaging with the substance of
what i said while giving the illusion of addressing each point.
> If you're not going to acknowledge your mistakes, just leave them be, focus
> on the important issues, and try and accomplish something positive.
please point them out and i'll evaluate whether they are worth 'acknowledging'.
> You could have taken Branden's criticism as constructive, and an
his criticism was not constructive. it was a pedantic time-waster. quibbling
about words is not useful criticism. paraphrasing and sometimes distorting
what i said and then declaring "tautology! i win!" really isn't a very
productive style, either. if he had anything relevant to say, he would have
engaged with the substance rather than quibbling over the precise definitions
of words - words which he knows as well as i, in the context of the free
software dialogue that has been occuring over the last decade or so.
anyone in the free software world knows what 'proprietary' means, and most
people with access to a dictionary do too and can figure out what it means in
the context of free software. as should have been obvious to anyone with more
than one or two neurons, i was specifically referring to binary-only software
that is not free in any sense of the word except perhaps dollar cost.
'non-free' means 'non-free according to the DFSG' - the only definition that
matters to debian developers.
'semi-free' or 'almost-free' means software that ALMOST meets the criteria of
the DFSG but fails on ONLY one or two points - i.e. most of the software in the
debian non-free archive. the term 'semi-free' at least is also defined on the
FSF site, although the FSF definition wrongly emphasises the "selfish"
prohibition of profit as the defining criteria when there are often other
criteria (such as no use by DoD or other government depts, or use only by
schools etc).
> opportunity to highlight the parts of what you had to say that were
> worthwhile. Instead, your post was so disappointing that I wound up
> choosing to waste everyone's time with this personal comment.
well, if you want to waste your time trying to make yourself look "fair and
balanced" over garbage like this then go right ahead. personally, i think
there have been far better arguments produced by the get-rid-of-non-free bigots
than this kind of trivial quibbling.
craig
Reply to: