Re: Questions to candidates
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 06:58:12AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 05:12:44PM +0000, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> > > 3. Do you think Debian should continue to support non-free?
> >
> > No. Debian is about creating a operating system with free software,
> > and I don't think we should be in the business of distributing
> > non-free software. I think we should focus on what we do best (create
> > and integrate free software), and this would also get us closer to
> > other players in the community, such as the FSF.
> >
> > Having said this, I don't think the current non-free removal vote is
> > being done correctly. If we decide to remove non-free, we have to
> > provide a good upgrade plan for our users. Thus, I think we should
> > *first* move non-free to something like non-free.org, encourage people
> > to use new APT sources list while at the same time supporting the old
> > APT lines (i.e. still keeping it on Debian mirrors) for a while.
>
> I knew *somebody* was going to bite this one.
>
> It has proven to be difficult to impossible to get people to do any
> real work towards doing things in this "obvious" way.
>
> Taken as a given that everybody either wants to keep non-free or to
> remove it (near enough to accurate), I'll introduce this tautology:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The work to provide an upgrade plan for non-free users must be
> performed by either or both of these groups:
>
> (a) Those who wish to see non-free removed
> (b) Those who wish to see non-free kept
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Group (a) does not want to do this work because they want to have
> nothing to do with non-free. Group (b) does not want to do this work
> because they want non-free to be in Debian, not external to it.
Err, no, group (b) does not want to do this work, because it is not
worth the effort. I guess it is reasonable to expect that the work be
done by those advocating the change over those currently satisfied by
the status quo.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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