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Re: Proposal: Keep non-free



#include <hallo.h>
* MJ Ray [Wed, Feb 25 2004, 09:58:55PM]:

> Some hardware manufacturers do help to produce free software drivers, 
> or even publish them themselves. We give them the carrot of letting 
> their drivers into main. Why should we give the carrot of inclusion on 
> our ftp archive to those who are not being fair partners?

You should broaden your horizon if you think that it is all about the
hardware manufacturers (in the last instance) only. Do you think that
they produce everything built in their devices? Are you really so naive
to think that everything in the hardware world can be powered by free
software only? If yes, please throw away your PC and get an abacus, this
would be the real hardware driven by 100 percent free software.

In the real world, hardware manufacturers have to deal with IP,
contained in 3rd party components, including many IC firmware issues.
And since nowadays more and more components require the exact
cooperation of hardware and software powers, it is often unavoidable to
make parts of the "user-level" software to depend on the hardware
issues. Even "good" free-software liking manufacturers often would like
to open-source the complete source, but they have contracts with 3rd
party vendors, and there is often no way to work around it.

> >Thanks, but no thanks?!?!?  That is just closed minded and is a slap 
> >in
> >the face to the vendors that are *writing* software for Linux.
> 
> We already refuse to distribute non-free on the official Debian CDs 
> and it is not part of the distribution. Even so, Debian has a far more 

Oh, please stop using such double moral standards. "We" do not
distribute anything. The vendors of Debian media are free to master them
as needed and they often (?always?) integrate non-free. The term
"official" does not mean much then.

> Before Mozilla, Netscape Navigator was the non-free poster girl. There 
> will probably always be some piece of software that someone considers 

There have always been fanatics that try to convince people of the
existence of some really big pressure to remove non-free, to burn all
media containing non-free part and shoot all maintainers of non-free
packages. Just ignore them.

Regards,
Eduard.



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