On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 11:50:44AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: > Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > It's a completely inconsistent and arbitrary policy. > > It's hardly that. We distribute only free software, that's our rule.
I thought the post http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00126.html demonstrated quite well why the policy is arbitrary. > The rest, as you say, is for the manufacturer and the user to work > out, but we disvalue non-free software, and so we don't distribute it > in main. (And packages which require it go into contrib.) > > You only see it as inconsistent because you think the relevant > consideration is "do we support this hardware", and you don't care how > we support it. Most of us *do* care; we support it provided we can do > so without distributing non-free software, because Debian is 100% Free > Software. Things we cannot support with free software we do not > support. This is not an inconsistent policy; this is the core of what > Debian stands for. It's software either way. The difference is in how the manufacturer ships it to you. Why should that make a difference to Debian? > To say it is arbitrary is worse, because that insults the motives of > the people who disagree with you. There's a time and a place for that I think. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>