On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 10:58:57AM -0500, Dale E Martin wrote: > > Uh, we're already doing that. Very few Debian resources are spent on > > non-DFSG-free stuff. A single day's uploads takes more disk space and > > bandwidth than the entirety of non-free. None of the regular maintenance > > work is non-free specific. > Yes, my point was that there would be little practical impact and you seem > to agree with that in part.
Well, no I don't, which was why I said: > > But that's not true. The practical consequences are many: Debian ceases > > supporting every non-free package, The miscommunication here is that you're overly limiting what you see as a "practical" consequence. The savings of disk space, bandwidth, CPU time are practical consequences, but they're not the only ones. Having our users and developers have to spend more time or effort for the same result, or having them get worse results are also practical consequences of the proposal. The former savings are a good thing, but they're also trivial. The latter consequences are bad things, and, in my opinion, they're not trivial. But they're _all_ practical consequences, as opposed to moral, or theoretical, or marketing consequences. > > non-free maintainers have to setup their own archives, > There are tons of those already, many in wide use. download.kde.org, > backports.org, and the bunk backport collection all come to mind. I don't > see this as big stumbling block. Personally, I think all of those are representative of failings within the Debian project. > > Consider that many people outside the project consider non-free software > > to be important, and that Debian's balanced stance on the matter -- make > > the distinction clear, but don't be otherwise prejudiced about them -- > > achieves all our goals. > It achieves all of the goals having to do with technical excellence, but > it's not necessarily adequate from the philosophical standpoint; Sure it is: the existance of good, doesn't require the complete extermination of all evil. Likewise, the existance of 100% pure DFSG-free software doesn't require the complete absence of non-free software. > it seems to be viewed by some as hypocrisy. Some people see taking money for free software as hypocrisy too. Should we therefore only allow paupers to develop Debian? > One thing that noone has mentioned is that non-free has caused the project > to fall out of the good graces of the FSF to some degree. That's happened before, it'll probably happen again. We're different projects; and we're both strong enough to stand on our own. > One benefit of > dropping it would be that Debian could be "the official distribution" of > the FSF. Whether that's desirable to the group as a whole or not is > another big can of worms. :-) But there is one practical benefit that > dropping non-free could have. Adding an "FSF Approved!" sticker to a Debian CD is a marketing benefit, not a practical one. The distribution itself -- it's effectiveness, it's efficiency, whatever -- isn't affected at all. Personally, I think all those sort of benefits are outweighed by the people who need to run proprietary software, and finding Debian lets them do that very easily, are then able to see first hand the benefits of a pure free software system. We've not been doing a very good job at helping introduce those folks to free software, but I can only imagine it getting worse if we decide to drop non-free completely. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we can. http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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