Re: Why Anthony Towns is wrong
On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 01:53:28PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> 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.
You aim for it to no longer be supported on officialy visible debian
ressource, the fact that this will probably be the same DD volunteer
time going in maintaining the supposed non-free.org infrastructure, make
this a fiction, and a non-efficient one in the long run.
> > 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.
Unless said software becomes free.
I do believe that the presence of a recognized and legimitized
non-free.org will be counter productive to this effort, so we clearly
disagree. LEt's have this discussion again a few years from now, only
time will tell which of us was right. (Probably none or both will be
though, which is why i think removing non-free should be done on a
package by package basis).
> > 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.
Err, sorry, maybe i should not say care, but you chose, in your
communication to me, to clearly ignore that experience, and to make as
if it did not exist, so what am i supposed to conclude ?
And on what basis do you base yourself to disagree with those lessons ?
> > 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.
Except for GFDLed documentation, but let's not go into that one flamewar,
at least for now :)
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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