> > > What project or system is non-free a part of? > > Why do you assume it is part of any project or operating system? > > The claim I'm refuting is that non-free is “really” part of Debian. The > organisation which gets to declare that is the Debian project; they say > it's not. That should settle whether it is or is not “really” part of > Debian. > Let's be more precise. There is the Debian distribution and the Debian Project.
"Packages in the other archive areas (contrib, non-free) are not considered to be part of the Debian distribution, although we support their use and provide infrastructure for them (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing lists)."[1] I agree that the Debian Project can define that the Debian distribution does not contain contrib and non-free. non-free and contrib are however part of the Debian Project. You cannot define, maintain, support, provide infrastructure for something and then say it's not a part of what you do. At the very least it falls under name confusion [2]. > Now, I agree that there is widespread confusion over this in people's > understanding of what is in Debian; which is a large part of why this > forum has been created. But we participating here need to agree on > definitions as fundamental as this, or agreement on what to do is rather > hopeless. I agree. The confusion is however enough for the FSF to not consider the Debian distribution free. -Bryan [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html [2] http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
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