Re: "keep non-free" proposal

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 06:08:33PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> 
> > Well, as you all know i have upto now be mostly a proponent of the keep
> > non-free camp, because, altough i fully would prefer every software in
> > debian to be free, i feel that this is not really yet the time for it.
> 
> Ah, so there is a time for it?  Can you please explain what that time
> will be?  (Either with a date, or a clear list of conditions.)
> 
> I hope that the answer isn't "when there is nothing in non-free
> anyhow".

I don't know. We, as a debian project, and the foss community at large,
are not yet ready or willing to fight the writer of non-free drivers,
so, i doubt the time is ready to get ride of other non-free software.

But if you would have read the rest of my post, or my other mails, you
would know that i advocate a case by case schedule for this to happen.

Let's take two examples : 

  netscape : it was in non-free a long time ago, and since the advance
  of mozilla and the other free browser, i believe it reached a point
  where we could sanely say that there is no use for the old netscape
  packages, and even that their continued existence posed a threat to
  security and such, and they could be removed. This maybe didn't happen
  as soon as it could have been, but it was because we didn't care
  enough, and because even the non-free removal advocate do care more
  aboure removing the word non-free from everything debian, than the
  actual freeness of the packages.

  java: well, i believe the moment is soon where kaffe and the other
  free implementation will be enough for not needing non-free java
  suites. This doesn't seem to be the exact right moment for this
  though, as there is still some work needed for kaffe and co, among
  them a free java plugin for mozilla. Well, java is currently not on
  non-free, but it is the most used third party software.

Do you seriously think that having java packages in non-free or not
would have made any influence on the progress of alternative packages ?
If so, i would be very interested to know strong facts that lead you to
this conclusion, and not some vague argumentation.

Friendly,

Sven Luther