On Sat, Sep 30, 2000 at 05:21:04PM -0500, Joseph Carter wrote: > On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 01:39:34AM +1100, Peter Eckersley wrote: > > > No. There's nothing wrong if someone feels dissapointed if "no" wins by > > > 80%. > > > It would mean that a brutal majority of the Debian developers care little > > > about the politics of the Project. I would not find that result very > > > amusing, that's for sure. > > > > Hi. I'm not a Debian developer (yet :), but I've got to say that that is > > a very illogical claim. > > > > It is entirely consistent to believe very strongly in the creation of a > > completely free operating system, but at the same time to believe that > > *pragmatically*, the best way to achieve widespread use of this OS is > > by keeping around a few packages of non-free software, until the free > > alternatives are clearly *better*. > > That's the whole point of this proposal. John feels that non-free has > outlived its usefulness and should be purged now since the vast majority > of people no longer need it (other than the software they already have > installed, which wouldn't go away just because the packages did > naturally..) > > I just ran vrms to see what it found on my system: > > some fonts, gpg modules, lha, mpg123, netscape, quake-lib, xanim > > The gpg modules I use for Debian - my RSA key has been unofficially > retired. I plan to mail a revokation at the end of the year. lha can be > made useless now that I have permission to re-pack quake-lib's upstream > without it. netscape I won't need as soon as I have Mozilla's next > milestone with SSL. mpg123 will be obsolete when I find the CD with these > 4 old tracks whose mp3s don't play with xmms so I can re-rip them with ogg > vorbis. What's that leave? fonts, quake-lib, and xanim? Please.
Well, because you have no use for most of the stuff in non-free, it don't mean that other people have not need of it. Even if the people needing it are just a few one. That said, maybe we could make a survey or something such, to see what packages are in non-free, who uses them, and if it would be possible to use a free replacement. This would possibly clarify what will actually happen. Friendly, Sven LUTHER