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Re: non-free and users?



Raul Miller wrote:
> > If Linux were on the majority of all desktops, I might buy into the
> > idea that getting rid of non-free would benefit the majority of users.
> > But, right now, the so many users use stuff so much less free than our
> > "non-free" that that concept seems a bit silly.

On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 10:50:33PM +0100, Sergey V. Spiridonov wrote:
> Is it very clever(ethical) to increase users dependency on non-free even
> more?

You're asking several different things here and maybe saying something
I disagree with at the same time.

Are we increasing users dependency on non-free?  How?

And what about the reverse?

If someone has to use some other operating system because they can't
use ours without some non-free package, what does that mean?

If we make it easy to move from free-to-redistribute but
doesn't-satisfy-all-guidelines packages to totally free packages, what
does that mean?

If a user can spend a little money to buy some non-redistributable
software but instead uses debian with some of "non-free" packages
non-free, what does that mean?

Perhaps an analogy to chemical equilibrium is useful here.
 
> Is it clever(ethical) to spend resources on non-free?

Could you be more specific?

For example, if we spend a few email messages on non-free, is that bette
or worse than spending some extra machines and the effort to build a
parrallel distribution?

> Whith a little effort Debian can become the first free distibution
> in the world.  This will be a great day.

I think you're about a decade late, but the sentiment sounds sweet.

-- 
Raul



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