Re: "keep non-free" proposal
On 10 Mar 2004 11:25:51 -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG <tb@becket.net> said:
> Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> writes:
>> Necessary for what purpose?
> 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.
My standard of necessity is simple: if I feel it is necesary
for me, then I say it is necessary. How do I decide? Since these are
subjective issues, there is an element of gut feeling involved. For
example, even though there are alternate editors/mua's/irc
clients/news readers out there, emacs is important for me.
I do not think that if, after years of emacs/vi wars, I have
not let others determine for me what I require, nor have I seen fit
to debate what my criteria of necessity is, that I am likely to do
so now.
Why is it relevant? Oh, to determine when the non free section
contains important software? My take is this: if someone has taken
the time and effort to package software despite it being non-free,
and is standing up to take responsibility, and maintain it, and this
person is a fellow Debian develope, who has a commitment to Debian
and free software, then heck, the chances are that the software is
needed.
I trust my fellow developers; I don't think they would
frivolously package _non-free_ software for the heck of it.
>> > 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.
We did make a promise (umm, a contract, even) to make non-free
packages available, even though not a part of Debian, for the sake of
their users, the implied promise is that the care that developers pay
to packages, and the resultant quality, shall be provided to those
packages as well. Indeed, the added value of the debian membership
and infrastructure was implied in that promise.
So I do believe.
>> 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?
non-free.org is vapourware, and god know what standards of
quality it shall have; Debian does have a certain reputation
for quality that purely hypothetical organizations have difficulty
in matching.
manoj
--
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I/O, I/O...
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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