Re: [all candidates] Return to the desert island (cont.)
Bart Martens <bartm@debian.org> writes:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 09:27:58AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
>> You can use flashplugin-nonfree to download a piece of software that has
>> a nonfree license, which is then installed on your system; the result is
>> that you now have a system which has some non-DFSG-free software
>> installed. To be able to reach this situation on a system that only has
>> "main" enabled would be utterly wrong.
>>
>> You can use pidgin-facebookchat to talk to a non-free service; but
>> whatever you do, the result will *never* be that you end up with a
>> system which has some non-DFSG-free software installed. As such, I don't
>> think it's necessary that you not be able to reach this on a system that
>> only has "main" enabled.
>
> OK, you seem to draw the line where non-free is installed or not on the local
> system. That makes somewhat sense to me. But then the part "which require
> software outside of the distribution to either build or function" in
> debian-policy should be replaced by something like "which causes software
> outside of the distribution to be installed on the local system".
What one uses a particular piece of software for, to access a non-free
service or anything else, is none of our business. Is it sad that
non-free services exist? Yes. Is it bad that we have free software in
main, that allows users to extract their data from these services?
Definitely not. Is it bad that we have free software that allows users
to communicate with non-free services? Nope.
We have plenty of software in main that allow things like this, and
that's a good thing. Our task is to allow our users to get things
done. As long as the software we distribute is free, it does not matter
much whether it requires a non-free service or not - we do not
distribute the service. By installing software that talks to a non-free
service, the system remains Free, that's where our jurisdiction ends.
We can, and we should encourage using free services, but whatever a
particular software talks to, does not affect its classification
according to the DFSG. The whole cloud stuff is a whole different can of
worms.
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