Re: Why Anthony Towns is wrong

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:

> > My goal is not cosmetic, it is to have Debian not support non-free as
> > a part of the Debian project.  If that were merely cosmetic, then you
> > wouldn't be complaining so much.
> 
> Well, the aim you want to achieve is cosmetic, or fictitious, or
> whatever you want to call it. The effect on users and packagers of
> non-free will be real though, and a real pain.

It's not cosmetic, it's practical.  And it's hardly fictitious.

One of the two aims I want is to accomplish is to have this stuff no
longer supported on Debian resources.  That's hardly cosmetic; it's a
significant thing.  And it's hardly fictitious.

> If at least you would have the excuse of wanting to use this as a basis
> to get rid of non-free software really, but you don't even want to
> achieve that.

Of course I want to get rid of non-free software eventually, and I
think the mission of Debian is a good way to make progress towards
that goal.  I believe that this resolution will contribute, and that
the coddling of non-free software has *never* helped in the production
of free software.

> Yeah. My experience tells me the contrary. But you don't care about it.

I do care about your experience, but I disagree with the lessons you
draw from it.  You are dishonest when you (continually) tell me what I
care about, despite my asking you not to guess, and despite my having
said so a number of times.

> Ah, and 10, 20 years ago, we were starting to get free software, like
> emacs or the gcc compiler, but running on non-free OSes.

Sure.  When we must use non-free software to develop free software,
it's ok to do so.  But the FSF never distributed that non-free
software we were using, we didn't help support and develop it as part
of our project, and we dropped it as soon as we possibly could.


Thomas