Russ Allbery wrote:
In other words, if non-free is just another archive section, why do we have this whole distinction? And while we're maintaining this distinction, I think it's clear that moving something into non-free is never going to be an action people are willing to take lightly. Since, after all, that means, in the words of the social contract, the software is being removed from Debian.
I always thought the point was not to say, "eww, this software stinks, DDs will need a gas mask before they can touch it," but rather to enable users to install lots and lots of software without reading any licenses, while having a smaller section where people know that they should check the legal bits. This, of course, can be achieved just fine even if non-free is "just another archive section".