Disclaimer: I'm not sure about if the GR is good/bad for advocating free software. I'm still thinking. And I un-carefully deleted a mesg that I want to reply, thus I got a such subject here. 8) My uncertainty on my belief on debian's belief on free software is arised while following the thread(s) anyways. I can understand some agree with the GR and some do not. That is simply a discussion on whether it is really good for advocating free software or not. This surely didn't raise my uncertainty on my belief on debian's belief on free software. But some mesg make me uncertain on my belief on debian's belief on free software. Free software may technically fail to take some task, that may be a bug somewhere (as in previous xv ... case), or just that it's still in beta or alpha (mozilla case), or even some patent law trouble (as in zip/unzip). I personally don't think these fail of free software is a proper point to against this GR. (That so many mesg takes this point to against this GR is the source of my FUD on my belief on debian's belief on free software.) If that is the reason to against this GR, then ... <ignore flame="flame"> what a weird case??? Am i a stupid jerk when yesterday I promote Gnumeric powered Linux to my friend in favor of Excel powered Win??? Wasn't RMS a crazy nerd at 1984 when he trying to launch GNU from scratch while there are already numerous working applications spreaded everywhere??? What was the REASON??? </ignore> I could see some say the inconvience could reduce our user base then could hurt our advocating for free software. I can see this is somewhat reasoned argument, though I am not sure if this is right. This didn't raise my uncertainty on my belief on debian's belief on free software. But, say, ``Free software cannot do this, non-free can, we (or most of our users) need non-free, so the GR is bad.'' I am really afraid of this kind of arguments. 1) As many pointed out already, the GR can't (NOBODY can indeed) make you don't use non-free. (In fact you can use everything you could download from Internet. Including JDK and some DeCSS like things.) Hence, ``we need non-free'' --XXX--> ``the GR is bad''. 2) Why I say ``I am afraid''?? "cause I've been blamed by my previous boss on my promoting for free software/Open source. And his blame is just like this. 8-P So, you guys can sure say I'm a stupid jerk, heh??? But the ridiculou thing is that my boss based his whole fortune on working on Linux! (He did a localized distro.) What a fsck! Okay then, here's the conclusion of this email: I know ALL debian developers believe in free software. (cause when they join, they should claim their belief on DFSG/SC et al.) My uncertainty of my belief on debian's belief on free software is just vague. That is surely your wording. 8) that gives me such an illusion/FUD. 8) And i recommend, as RMS has a phylosophy section on http://www.gnu.org/, why not debian has a corresponding section on http://www.debian.org/ to make everything clearer? Best regards, zhaoway ___________________________________________________________________ 新鲜热辣的潮流资讯,网易新辣Channel: http://spicy.163.com 闪客精品,尽在网易FLASH站: http://desktop.163.com/flash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]