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Re: "keep non-free" proposal



> > You keep talking like there's only one possible valid way of looking
> > at things -- and that's not beside the point, it's the main obstacle
> > preventing us from talking about what the point is.

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 06:50:35PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> I'm interested in hearing your way of looking at things, not your
> telling me that I won't listen to it.  Please, do share it!

Either

[a] Limit the scope of the discussion by telling me what "it" is,
or
[b] Respond to what I have written.

> I think that's a decent objective.  But we have historically had
> things in non-free even when we did have alternatives.

So, we've been slow to react.  

Or do you want to talk about current problems?

> Things that go in main have to meet the DFSG, and the maintainers
> say-so is not enough to satisfy that things have.  There is independent
> review, from the FTP masters and debian-legal about such things.

Ok.  Sounds like we're doing things right, though -- while we don't
always make perfect decisions at every instant in time, we still spot
problems and work to solve them

> So I would like to see non-free (if it remains) have a requirement
> that things be necessary, or only there in the absence of free
> alternatives, or something like that; and I think such a requirement
> should be enforced by more than the maintainer's say-so.  

Necessary for what purpose?

Lots of people seem to be taking the view that if they personally don't
need anything in non-free, that means that something's broken.

In my opinion, that means that we're doing this right -- we don't want
many people to have to use non-free.

> > Instead, you're implying that people will feel more pressured by the
> > absense of non-free and will therefore they will fix the problems such
> > that [2] will cease to be an issue.
> 
> No, that's not really what I'm doing.  I hope that non-free.org would
> exist, and I would hope that the Debian packages now in non-free would
> find a home there.  I would hope that users learn how to add the right
> apt-get line for it, just as they must learn to add non-free now.  

Ok, so you are also hoping various things.  I understand that.

> I agree with you that the non-free packages need to exist.  What I
> disagree about is that it must be Debian's job to provide them.

I agree that we shouldn't make any kinds of guarantees that we provide them.

But that's not the same as agreeing that we should forbid them from
being provided.

> > And, granted, in some cases people might react to pressure positively
> > where they would not have otherwise.  But, in tossing non-free, you're
> > tossing out a fair bit of the flexibility our project has to deal with
> > odd licensing problems.  And for what?
> 
> How do you see this flexibility working now?  I think I don't
> understand the question, and I would like to be sure I do before I try
> to give an answer to it.  

Right now, if there's some kind of copyright problem which doesn't prevent
distribution, but which requires significant time to sort out, the
package can be moved to non-free, until it's solved.

Pointing at successful examples (for example, java support) might not
be very convincing to you, because by definition any successful example
is something that no longer has to be in non-free.  Other examples might
not be very convincing because they're not examples of where we've gotten
rid of non-free.

So... what more do you need to know?

> Right now, the standards for main and contrib are very rigid and
> fairly precise, but we have in practice allowed for some flexibility
> around the timing of things (for example, the current lengthy delay in
> dealing with the GNU FDL).  We have allowed anything whatsoever in
> non-free provided we have the legal right to copy it from our server
> in a convenient way.

And provided it makes sense that "anything" this would have some use,
value or benefit to our users.  There's lots of shareware, for example,
which we do not bother distributing.

> I don't view non-free as a wonderful tool for dealing with "licensing
> problems".  Indeed, I would guess that we have been hampered by having
> upstream people say "well, we shouldn't make it free, after all,
> you'll still distribute it".  I don't think that helps at all; if my
> guess is right, then the flexibility you praise is doing a detriment.

Do you have significant evidence to back up these opinions?

In my experience, either [a] upstream genuinely wants the software to
be free, or [b] upstream could care less.  Who is it that cares about
Debian and is satisfied with non-free?

> I believe that we need to send the message to upstream authors that we
> stand for free software, and it is not our job to help them with
> non-free software.  Where this is tricky is in helping our *users*
> with non-free software; I don't mind doing that nearly as much.  But
> it is not in the long-term interests of our users to have non-free
> software.

Ok, but is there a real case where this has any significance?

In my experience, the people that care can be brought around just by
explaining the issues to them.  For large groups, this can take a while.

> I believe our users are better served by having the difference in
> licensing be met with a clearly marked difference in the organizations
> providing the software.  I do not believe our users are well served by
> the appearance that Debian is just fine with and happy to distribute
> non-free software.  If we are going to do it, I believe we should do
> it grudgingly, not eagerly, and we should be constantly trying to stop
> when we can, and only continuing because we feel we must--and I
> believe that decision should be made package-by-package, and should
> not depend on just the decision of one maintainer.

I've made a proposal to change apt/dpkg/etc. to address this.  I posted
it to this list a couple days ago.

In my opinion, that proposal should be more than adequate to fix
this problem.

> But this may not really respond to your question; I could only guess
> at just what you were looking for, so if it is not as responsive as
> you'd like, then please amplify the question a little or explain in
> more detail what the flexibility is that you have, and what about that
> flexibility helps our goals.

Well, for example, I want to be able to distribute documentation which
has "no modify" clauses.

I think that being able to understand a piece of software is critical
to using it, and to maintaining it.

Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?

Thanks,

-- 
Raul



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