Re: non-free and users?
Sven Luther wrote:
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 10:43:58PM +0100, Sergey V. Spiridonov wrote:
Sven Luther wrote:
I said that by redirecting efforts and resources from non-free to free
we will reduce amount of unethical situations. You say that redirecting
efforts and resources from non-free to free (that is what I propose)
will redirect them on something else.
Yeah, but you do realize, i hope, that the effort involved in doing
packaging is much much less than the effort involved in creating a free
alternative.
Yes, of course.
Let's take the unicorn package as an example. This package is a driver
for my ADSL modem, and consist of a GPLed kernel driver (well
GPLed+exception) and a binary only soft-ADSL library (the exception
...
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...
that, which is something really opposite to what the free/open comunity
is about, and which you would know if you had taken the effort to
contribute something.
Your are all right here.
Nope, the work i do for the non-free package, i will do anyway, since i
_need_ it to get ADSL access. Sure, if you would donate me a nice ADSL
ethernet modem/router that don't needs a driver, i might reconsider
that, but as you may well be aware, my capacity to help would be very
severly limited if i had no more internet access.
Yes, of course. BTW, it is quite easy to find a ADSL modem supported by
Linux, at least here in Germany.
How many companies do only distribute windows driver and
> don't provide specs?
I think most of hw companies act in this way.
Tell me, how will you help your friend which inadvertently bought a
nvidia graphic card instead of a radeon one to get 3D ? How will you
I will suggest him to buy radeon and to sell nvidia.
help me with my ADSL modem ? do you volunteer to write the soft-ADSL
library, so one more package could be removed from non-free ?
I see no reason to support those hw companies which do not provide
enough specs for driver. Those hw companies should have enough
resources to create and distribute driver themselves if they want,
without Debian donation. There are ADSL modems and graphic cards which
are supported by Linux without non-free drivers.
As for those without right to modification, i don't remember the number,
but most of them are documentation, not code, and many of those are
already mistakenly in main (see the GDFL issues). And i suppose that
even if you cannot modify those, you can always write an errata like
document (analogous to source+patch maybe ?), or print it and make some
annotations or whatever.
Documentation, especially GFDL is a special case, and I do not agree
that GFDL should be treated in the same way as programs. But if it will
this will not change my mind about other non-free. I still can get GFDL
docs from fsf.org. But, please let's finish with current topic first. I
think it will lead us to the wrong direction.
I think that software or any other thing can not be evil without
associated human action.
And there are many non-free licenced which prohibit use by the army or
the US governement or whatever, use by group of people that have already
shown their readiness for doing evil actions.
Really? I do not know about this :) But I said about associtaion,
because of you say:
> binary-only ones, which are not only non-ethical, but also plain
> _evil_.
I mean, that software can not be _evil_. As well as narcotics. As well
as a gun. It is a human, who produce an _evil_. It is a human who
acts non-ethical, or produce non-ethical situations.
--
Best regards, Sergey Spiridonov
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