Re: "keep non-free" proposal

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

On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 12:24:25PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-03-08 12:04:50 +0000 Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> 
> wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 11:39:43PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> >>On 2004-03-06 10:20:44 +0000 Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> 
> >>wrote:
> >>
> >>>elfutils was removed on the request of its maintainer on 9th 
> >>>December.
> >>
> >>elfutils is not an example of removal from non-free. It was in main. 
> >>I 
> >>filed bug #221761 after a debian-legal discussion pointed it out.
> >
> >And ? The fact that it previously was in non-free but is now in main
> >doesn't count ?
> 
> Was it? It's not now in main. The "initial upload" elfutils upload was 
> to main in July 2003 (version 0.84-1). It was removed from main on 9th 
> December (bug 221761). When was it in non-free?
> 
> >[...] The packages are not more actively
> >removed, because nobody, including the remove non-free proponent, care
> >enough about it.
> 
> As far as I can tell, Andrew Suffield and others are working as much 
> as they can on reducing non-free through analysing licences and 
> explaining the DFSG in that context. I doubt you have any reason to 
> accuse them of not caring enough.

Yeah, they care only about licencing, and conflictive relationship with
upstream, not about :

  1) finding and strengthening free alternative.
  2) having constructive discussion with upstream if relicencing is
  possible.
  3) actually asking for removal of obsolet non-free stuff. If a
  non-free maintainer is MIA or doesn't care anymore, who do you think
  will ask for its removal ? 

And i am sure with all the time lost in this thread, at least one
non-free software could have been fully reimplemented from scratch in a
free way, don't you think ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther