* Steve Langasek ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 01:42:01PM -0500, Joshua Haberman wrote: > > * Branden Robinson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > > On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 03:38:18PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote: > > > > On Jul 03, Petter Reinholdtsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I fully agree. Banning RFCs from debian is just silly. > > > > So, what other non-DFSG-free stuff is it "silly" to ban? Netscape > > > Navigator? Adobe Acrobat Reader? > > > Keep in mind that this hard-line stance of applying the DFSG to > > everything in the archive will probably make it more difficult to gain > > support for the non-free removal resolution. > > I think our commitment to providing a distribution consisting > exclusively of material whose license complies with the freedoms > outlined in the DFSG is far more important than the question of whether > we continue to distribute non-free alongside. If we are going to allow > documentation into main that follows a different set of rules than the > ones we use for software, the Social Contract must be amended to > unambiguously reflect this point of view. Otherwise, how are > redistributors and users supposed to know where the line is between > stuff-that's-really-free and stuff-that's-not-free-but-included-anyway?
If the separation between main and non-free is intended primarily as a guarantee that everything in main is DFSG-free, and that no part of the core distribution depends on non-free software, I completely agree with you. To the supporters of non-free removal, I get the impression that is more of a delineation between what the project morally endorses and what it only grudgingly supports as a service to users. If you assume the former view, there is no reason to remove non-free as a whole, because the main/non-free split already guarantees that Debian proper is 100% DFSG-free. If you assume the latter view, there is no reason to shun the non-modifiability of RFCs, because they are free enough for their purpose, just as license texts are. -- Josh Haberman Debian GNU/Linux developer
