Re: "keep non-free" proposal
Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> writes:
> Necessary for what purpose?
You seem to be saying that there are lots of necessary things in
non-free. It's the pro-non-free people who have been saying how
necessary it is. I'm assuming that you have some sense of what that
word means for you, and that we could work from there towards a common
understanding.
We can work out the details of what is the standard of necessity. I
already gave some suggestions that I might accept: hardware drivers
for closed drivers, non-free documentation for free software, for
example.
> 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.
I haven't heard anyone take that view.
> > 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.
First, some people have been reading the social contract as if it were
a promise to provide non-free packages to users.
> But that's not the same as agreeing that we should forbid them from
> being provided.
We can't forbid them. How could we? What we can do is not make it
Debian's job to provide them.
> 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.
How exactly does the presence of non-free, as opposed to non-free.org,
help this?
> 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?
We hear of upstream maintainers sometimes say they want their stuff to
be in Debian, and say that it's important, but resist making it free.
An excellent example is the FSF, but there have been others.
Moreover, why is it Debian's job to provide them advertising?
> > 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.
Sure, but the question here is: can you explain why non-free.org is so
much worse than non-free? Note that BTS is far less relevant to a
documentation package...
Thomas
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