Re: non-free and users?
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 07:58:05PM +0100, Sergey V. Spiridonov wrote:
> >>Are bad consequences which you take in account the same as what I
> >>describe? If not, can you please describe bad consequences you are
> >>talking about.
Raul Miller wrote:
> > Which description(s), specifically, are you referring to?
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 09:38:28PM +0100, Sergey V. Spiridonov wrote:
> I described situation which contradicts human ethic when one is not
> able to help because he agreed to what is written in non-free license.
Note: I feel you've not provided an adequate basis for this statement.
It appears that the issue you are concerned about is not "when one is
not able to help" but that instead you are concerned about "written in
non-free license".
Otherwise, you would would also be concerned about "when one is not
able to help because Debian would not distribute software that doesn't
satisfy every guideline of DFSG."
> Such situation is one of consequences of non-free distribution. I said
> that people who distribute non-free instead of working on free do not
> take in account negative consequences of what they are doing.
See above -- you're not taking into account negative consequences of
"Debian would not distribute".
However, I do believe I'm taking into account "negative consequences of
distributing non-free". The big problem with distributing non-free is
that this might obscure free alternatives. I attempt to address this
in part 5 of my proposed rewrite of the social contract where it says:
"Additionally, we will work to find, package and support free alternatives
to non-free software ..."
This, combined with some of the other statements in that proposal
("...we will never make the system depend on non-free software.",
"Our priorities are our users and free software" and "The software in
"non-free" satisfies some, but not all, of our guidelines", and so on)
make it very clear that non-free software is not a replacement for free
software, that we're providing software at a lower grade of freedom only
to address cases where that's the best we can do to help our users.
> You said that you are quite aware of the consequences. I asked you, what
> are this bad consequences which you balance against good consequences.
Have you read my proposed social contract? Did you notice the above
provisions? If so, why do you feel the need to ask this question?
> > That is what you said:
> > I think we're quite aware of the consequences, and that each of us
> > balances the good consequences against the bad consequences.
>
> Can you please describe this bad consequences? Are they same which I
> describe?
The potential bad consequences are that Debian might have to stop
distributing or supporting the package [perhaps partially, perhaps
completely], and that users might not have any other alternatives.
--
Raul
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