Re: Analysis of the ballot options
> There are essentially two positions here, which appear to be best
> represented by options 3 and 6. In summary, these positions are:
>
> ---
> Debian is about releasing software
> ---
> Debian is about releasing free software
> ---
Surely this terse (and not exactly unbiased) summary has the same
problems as the previous SC, i.e., the unclear definition of "software"?
(Substitute "unclear" with "not well-agreed-upon" if it makes you happier.)
> The assumption here is that our users are not best served by free
> software. I question why anybody who holds that opinion would have
> anything to do with Debian, or free software in general. I think that
> our users are best served by having free software, and releasing with
> anything less is doing them a major disservice, especially if we foist
> non-free software on them for two or three years until the next
> release.
You speak as if it were a choice between releasing free software/data
versus non-free alternatives. Of course the real problem is that in
many cases there simply are no current alternatives at all (e.g., the
significant amounts of GFDL documentation). This does rather muddy
things up -- documentation for instance is an important component of
a system for users who don't know it all already (or who haven't been
using GNU/Linux for so long that they know all the magic tricks to try
to work it out for themselves).
Anyway, I'm basically claiming that your summary is a rather broad
over-simplification (which of course happens to suit your own proposal).
b.
Reply to: