Re: Proposal: Keep non-free
On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 12:29:39PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 11:47:45AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > It is not that we don't want it to happen, by all way, implement it, and
> > if it fullfills all its promise, i would be glad to move my non-free
> > packages to it, but i will not use my time and energy to make it happen,
> > as i have less wasteful ways of using my free time, working on my
> > packages in debian/main, on d-i, and on other free projects.
> >
> > Also, i want to point out that this non-free.org thingy, maintained by
> > debian people, providing packages maintained by debian people, and
> > having to intertie neatly with the remaining of debian packages in main,
> > would be a shame. It is not because you name it non-free.org that it
> > will not be linked to debian anymore than us saying non-free is not part
> > of debian. So is the effort involved really worth it ? Just that some
> > bunch of hypocrits can be satisfied that 'debian doesn't distribute
> > non-free stuff', and are able to close the eyes on non-free.org while
> > they could not on debian/non-free ?
> >
> > And finally, i believe that a non-free.org would not be a good thing, it
> > would be even worse as debian/non-free is, and a danger to the project,
> > since it could well be that it may take more importance in the future,
> > and that people who would contribute to debian may be more interested in
> > contributing to non-free.org instead, with its less restrictive rules,
> > and sometimes quite desdaining debian-legal folk. Do you really want to
> > be the one responsible for this ? For an eventual future fork of debian ?
>
> Your mail has a strange slope. First, you say you 'would be glad to move
> [your] non-free packages to it', but in the end you say you 'believe
> that a non-free.org would not be a good thing' and start talking about
> the downfall of Debian because of non-free.
Well, like said, if there is a viable non-free, with all the guarantees
that it will stay and be well maintained, i will have no objections in
using it. It should provide equivalent functionality to debian/non-free
though, including BTS and PTS support. The most difficult problem would
be in reassigning bugs between this non-free BTS and debian's BTS
though, no idea how you plan to do that.
I still think that it is not worth it, and may be a bad idea in the end,
but by all means, if it make people happy.
That said, i would maybe be more inclined to ask infrastructure on my
upstream's distribution servers for the unicorn drivers for example, not
sure they would grant it though, but it would be more logical, but also
start the down-sloop of fragmented debian archives, which i believe is a
bad idea.
> Anyway, if non-free.org leads to the fact that people mainly interested
> in maintaining non-free Debian packages will not bother to join the
> project, well, I'd consider this an improvement. Debian is forked
> everyday by 3rd party distributions, and quite frankly, the non-free
> fork would be one of the most logical and apparent.
Yeah, but still. It is clear that current debian/non-free is somehow
shuned, while a separate non-free.org legitimizes non-free packages. I
am not entirely sure i like this idea, or if it is something i would
like to support.
> And the fact whether people think it is worth the effort to
> differentiate between ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free and
> ftp.non-free.org should be left to the person voting. It is highly
> subjective and will *never* be solved by discussion.
It is no subjective, it is hypocritical. The people advocating this will
declares themselves satisfied, but they will only be closing their eyes
on reality.
> Really, I wonder how I managed to get into this discussion *again*. I
> was just saying that I'm happy to discuss *implementation details*, not
> talking about the pro and cons of this. I hope you understand that I
> will only very selectively answer to mails which go in the former
> direction from now on, I've got more important stuff to do.
No proble, if you feel like it, please read only the first half of this
message. I doubt that here is the right place to have this discussion
though, and i also believe that maybe you have more valuable things to
do with your time than that, but this is up to you.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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