Re: Archive section for open source models

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Clint" == Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> writes:


    >> Maybe the answer is that they're just too useful to the
    >> distribution to not package regardless of our opinions about
    >> whether they're free software. User experience and free software
    >> principles *are* often in tension and it's fine for us to shift
    >> that balance, in my opinion. But I guess I would have expected us
    >> to do that via a mechanism similar to non-free-firmware if we
    >> wanted to make it easy for users to use software that is
    >> OSAID-approved but not DFSG-free, at least if we have a lot of
    >> it.

    Clint> Maybe that is what we should be doing; I'm not sure.

I'd support this, especially if

1) the name of the section did not make a negaive judgment about using
it.  Between the text in the social contract and the name non-free, we
come across as making a judgment 
against using non-free software.  People who do that are tolerated;  we
recognize that their needs exist, but we hope for a world where they are
just able to use free software.
We have (or had) programs like vrms to encourage people to use only free
software.
But under Russ's reasoning at least, I will never get a free spam
classifier, or a free writing assistant. I'm fine with that but not okay
making the same judgment against wanting spam classifiers or writing
assistants that we do make about non-free software.

2) Providing some mechanism (allowing recommends is the obvious solution
to me) so that programs in main can get their model data without having
to download it from non-Debian sources. Being able to have a complete
system with things like spam classifiers, OCR, text to speech, only
given a Debian mirror is very important to me.

important