Bruce Perens: > Yes, I know. I'm thinking about how Debian should be differentiating itself > from the commercial Linux distributions. One way would be for the system to
Debian is already differentiating itself from them - by its open development by volunteers, availability of the current development version (not only releases every few months), public bug tracking system, and powerful packaging system. I think this is fine as is, there is no need to differentiate itself more than that. > be _entirely_ free software, since they are all picking up commercial > software on their CDs. I have previously been a champion of the non-free > software in Debian, but I am re-thinking my position on it. I can't speak for all Debian users, of course, but I think most of them, like me, are probably interested more in a useful system and less in political goals like having 100% (not 99%) free software. Let's differentiate ourselves a little from the FSF too. Don't get me wrong, they make a lot of good free software which I use every day and I recognize their work, but I think too much politics is not good. I call my system "Linux", not "Lignux" :-). As long as most software is free, I don't mind a few shareware programs (distributed with permission from the authors, of course) included in the distribution. If I don't use them, I don't have to pay for them, and some of them are free for personal use (which is probably the case for most Debian users anyway). Thanks, Marek
