On Sun, Aug 05, 2012 at 09:49:01AM +1200, Bryan Baldwin wrote: > Which brings me back to the point I originally made. If Debian were serious > about being a free distribution, we wouldn't be taking out our tape > measures to figure out the minimum distance we need to put between main and > contrib/nonfree before it makes Debian's claim to be 100% free become > something meaningful.
Gods. You know, I'm somewhat surprised at my own personal reaction, as before this initiative existed I tried in my small way to pursue Debian's inclusion in the FSF free distributions list. I've heard just enough of Bryan's sort of views to solidy my opinion. Debian's a great operating system, and it's used by a huge number of people. Additionally, the people working on Debian are doing the vast majority of the work that actually makes up the content of the more popular leech distributions. Debian is hugely successful in getting free software into peoples' hands. This is relevant and is the case regardless of whether the organization provides support for non-free software as an optional resource. Support for non-free software is going to get more people to use free software. Let's take an average Windows user with a typical laptop. We want him to use free software, right? How is he going to feel about free software when he can't use his wireless networking? He won't give it a second look. If, however, he's able to use it and see the benefits of it, it's quite possible he'll spend some time finding hardware that is fully supported by free software next time around. But he won't get there without some help. While this array of complaints are irrelevant to Debian, and likely the vast majority of Debian developers and the even more numerous legions of systems administrators running their business and organizations on Debian will never hear about these debates, I'm still struck by the image of overwrought zealots in an ivory tower throwing stones at the people building and maintaining the foundation of their tower. Let's consider that we're talking about two organizations searching to find common ground. If we were simply trying to decide how Debian could change to become (once again, as they were previously) acceptable to the FSF, that's really easy. But that's not the point. If there isn't a willingness to consider being flexible on both sides, then we might as well go back to Debian being hugely popular and the FSF promoting rebranding efforts like Trisquel and gNewSense. I'm personally disappointed that we haven't had more concrete proposals from the project leads involved in the list. I am inclined to think that there's a lot of back-room haggling going on, and that seems distastefully opaque for our purpose. Or maybe there's not, and the effort's not being taken seriously enough. Stefano: Have you got a notion of what the SPI and the Debian maintainers might be willing to do towards separating Contrib and Non-Free more completely from Debian? What might we use as a litmus test to get a notion of willingness? John: What are the areas where the FSF is willing to flex to include Debian? Or is the task really just a matter of making Debian flex until it fits the desired definitions? Is Richard's view authoritatively representative of the FSF's view, or is this as-yet resolved within the FSF? We are hackers and engineers. We understand the problems before us and we can begin charting out how we wish to tackle them any time now. -- Mason Loring Bliss ma...@blisses.org Ewige Blumenkraft! awake ? sleep : random() & 2 ? dream : sleep; -- Hamlet, Act III, Scene I _______________________________________________ Fsf-collab-discuss mailing list Fsf-collab-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/fsf-collab-discuss