Remi Vanicat wrote:
"Sergey V. Spiridonov" <sena@hurd.homeunix.org> writes:Remi Vanicat wrote:"Sergey V. Spiridonov" <sena@hurd.homeunix.org> writes: In this case, I clearly disagree with you. By stopping to distribute non-free we will decrease the amount of good, and so act non-ethical.Where is this good, which we will decrease? Do you think that dropping non-free will broke the upstream copy, or it will destroy the copy of those who downloded it? Where is the harm?
it is the documentation of a free software. We loose. It will be the only thing that removing non-free will do to our user : losing the nowadays integration of non-free stuff to debian.
By stopping to distribute non-free Debian will reduce the amount of good he *can* do. He will also reduce the amount of non-ethical action he is compeled to do. Firstly let's look at the hypotetical example of Debian which never distributed non-free. It is more simple then current situation. If we will got an agreement on this example, we can easely decide on the current situtation.
Let's say we have Debian without non-free. There is a package which is non-free but is useful for users. Debian has two options: to accept it or to reject. By accepting non-free package Debian compel himself to non-ethical actions in future. Debian acts ethicaly accepting non-free package, but not as much as possible if the package will be free. By rejecting non-free package Debian does not increase the amount of good actions he *can* do.
It seems that refusing to increase the amount of good things, one *can* do, is non-ethical even if doing this will compel to non-ethical actions. I do not agree with this in this case.
It is very important for Debian to act ethically all the time. Why? Debian is non-profit organisation. For commercial enterprise which main goal is to get more money it is reasonable to act not on the highest ethical level, because the goal is not that high. This is not the case with Debian. Debian goal is to help people (to produce good, to act very ethically). By compelling himself to non-ethical actions Debian is not able to go to his goal that effective that he can. By choosing to distribute free-only software Debian will act on the very high level, directly going to his goal, helping people.
-- Best regards, Sergey Spiridonov