Re: "keep non-free" proposal
On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 10:23:29AM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 08:48:31AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > 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.
>
> To iterate: I consider this as the prime example for the failure of the
> 'getting rid of non-free, because better Free alternatives exist now'
> theory.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, Netscape did *not* get removed because
> 'Mozilla/Konqueror/Galeon are better', but because 'Oops, we can't fix
> that zlib bug and there is no upstream fix'.
Yeah, but that is a failure in the process of handling non-free, not
because this is what we wanted.
And mostly because the remove non-free proponents didn't care enough to
ask for its removal at that time.
And if you remember well, my position is to keep non-free for now, but
to more actively work to be able to remove non-free packages
individually, either because the licence changed or because a free
alternative has been found.
And i don't see anyone of the drop non-free proponent specially active
in advocating free replacement of packages in non-free.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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