You're both right... Of course we want to promote free software, but without compatibility with commercial applications, many solution stacks are missing key components. That excludes Debian in an area where SUSE and Red Hat are proud to stand up and say they support Oracle, SAP, or whatever.
The Debian way is to promote the availability of source code, but is that more important than worldwide adoption in general? The focus should be on capturing the audience first, and converting commercial ISVs to the open source model after you have a captive audience. Am I wrong? -----Original Message----- From: A J Stiles [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 1:17 AM To: debian-amd64@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: Commercial programs in Debian On Friday 05 May 2006 06:53, Gudjon I. Gudjonsson wrote: > Hi > Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things. > I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a > kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most > commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat > and sometimes SuSe. Such a list might make it more interesting for the > companies to port their applications to Debian and it would definetly make > my life easier:). This is a most un-Debian-like thing to be doing. Instead of running non-Free software on Debian, we should be seeking to create real Free alternatives {although, demanding source code from vendors would certainly not hurt. I have nothing in principle against the use of reasonable force in the course of obtaining Source Code.} Availability of Source Code is *the* single biggest reason why so much of the software that is found in Debian can run on so many different architectures {second only to NetBSD if I recall correctly?} That diversity is something we should be proud of. *Un*availability of Source Code has already destroyed a certain other operating system: every new release has to support a growing heap of legacy code, and every insecurity ever exploited by a legitimate program has to remain. -- AJS delta echo bravo six four at earthshod dot co dot uk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]