On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:32:50 +1000, Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
said:
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 11:24:04PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> >> Several distros include non-free software, as long as it's
>> >> distributable.
>> > Debian's one of them -- we just clearly separate out the non-free
>> > stuff from the free stuff.
>> I am coming to the conclusion thst we do not clearly enough mark
>> the distinction.
> *shrug* The only lack of clarity comes when people indulge in
> sweeping rhetoric claiming that everything Debian related is 100%
> free, which is not true now and never has been.
Yep, it is awfully convenient when people disagreeing with us
can be labelled as merely indulging in sweeping rhetoric.
To the point tat hand: while we might not have ever met the
goals outlined in the social contract, there was never any
doubt that we were striving for it -- freedom, amd free licenses,
were always something you could count on Debian to embrace, any
deviations were errors and omissions to be corrected, and not
precedents to point to and say we could relax the stance that
non-free licesnses hindered the community that we were trying to
foster and harmed users in the long run.
> Personally, the conclusion I'm coming to is that Debian's spent a
> little too much time trying to have it both ways on issues like
> this, rather than fighting for what we actually believe even when
> that doesn't fit into a simple slogan.
What I actually believe in (I am sure you were not saying you
know better than I what I believe in, with that royal we, do you) is
that free information is worth striving for, no matter what form that
information takes.
Case in point: Thanks to Colin Walter's liberal licensing of
his Debian packaging talk, I was able to give my local Linux users
group an excellent introduction to Debian (with full attribution, of
course); a non-free license would have been an obstacle.
manoj
--
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? One, but you
can never change it back again.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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