> They produce much software
> which benefits activists. But they hurt the free software message by
> justifying nonfree software use.
tough call. without debian i think we (free software) would be a decade behind,
by my estimation.
with debian over the past 5 years, we are nearly 5 years behind.
so without debian, i think we would be at least 10 - nearly 5, or nearly 5
years behind. but i dont just mean the past 5 years, i mean the ones that
counted for a great deal.
> Of course there are more important
issues than software freedom. But Debian does not appeal to those. They
appeal to having more users. Freedom is not having more users. Freedom
is liberating people from the masters' control.
i think debian used to get those people a lot closer to being liberated. you
treat this as either or, which is understandable, but we are talking about 10s
of thousands of free software packages carefully separated from the non-free
stuff.
> Is it useful to help such a community that mistreats its users by making
it correct its wrongs? It is better that such community dies by its
mistakes. What do you think?
i think if you think of things just as organisations, i can understand your
logic. if you care only about free software and not free software developers, i
can understand your logic.
if you think that someone who contributes only free software to debian is a
non-free software developer because of where their free software goes, i dont
know.
but if you consider that there are free software developers that suffer from
working with debian and suffer from their abuse, i think we can extend our
concerns a little further than laser-like apathy towards every work in progress.
im a free software developer, but im also a person.
also, the point of freedom is to liberate the user.
maybe it makes more sense on a case-by-case basis, because i think the fsf
gained a great deal from the existence of debian.
an incredibly great deal. i never tried a fully-free distro until trisquel was
available. i dont think much of it today, but at the time it was a big deal.
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