On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 03:14:49PM +0200, Kari Pahula wrote: >I would like to hear what the candidates think about the non-free >section. Is having it hosted on Debian's infrastructure still worth >it? Yes, I believe so. Unfortunately, there are still quite a few packages in non-free that a lot of our users depend on. The mix of packages is changing - we used to look for netscape and other apps in non-free, but recently that is less of an issue. Instead, more of our documentation has moved over there, along with other commonly-desired things like device firmware. Those packages do not meet our normal standards of freedom, but ensuring that they are available in a well-known location, packaged properly, helps us support our users. I believe there is also some evidence that non-free is a good way to help convince people to work with us on freeing up their software. >Do you expect that there would be any changes regarding its >status during your term? I wouldn't expect so, no. >Do you think that there are going to be votes like >http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002 again? That is more likely, yes. From time to time, we need to re-evaluate our position as a project on issues like the non-free section. >A snapshot from http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/gr_non_free_tally.txt: > > Option 1---->: Choice 1: Cease active support of non-free [3:1 majority needed] > / Option 2--->: Choice 2: Re-affirm support for non-free > |/ Option 3-->: Choice 3: Further Discussion > ||/ >V: 312 93sam Steve McIntyre >V: 213 ajt Anthony Towns >V: 312 hertzog Raphaël Hertzog >V: 312 luther Sven Luther >V: 132 sho Samuel Hocevar >V: 231 sjr Simon Richter >V: 312 wouter Wouter Verhelst > >Gustavo Franco wasn't a DD during this vote and Aigars Mahinov didn't >vote. The rest of you: would you still vote like you did in 2004, if >the issue was brought up again? I would, yes. I don't think that the time is right to completely jettison support of our users that still depend on some of the things in non-free. I hope that situation will change in future. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com "Since phone messaging became popular, the young generation has lost the ability to read or write anything that is longer than one hundred and sixty characters." -- Ignatios Souvatzis
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