Antonio Rodriguez wrote: > The following is a message that I grabbed from the archives of > developers' list, the ones with the power of vote about this or any > other resolution. There are ideas here that are worth reading, so I > decided to post it. Since it is in public domain, I hope Manoj doesn't > mind. > Antonio. > %%%%%%%%%%% ************************************************* > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%******************************************* > %%%%%%%%%%% ************************************************* > > Hi, > > So far, we have always packages ``All the packages fit to > package''. The only criteria has been that we be legally allowed to > package software, and that some one finds it useful enough to spend > the effort packaging it. Indeed, when we could not distribute the > binaries, we created sourece only packages, or installer packages. > > It was, IMHO, a judicious mix of free software evengelism, and > one of creating the *BEST* distribution, with all the useful > software we could package. I could almost always find any software > available out there already packaged for debian. We were the > inclusive distribution, and we showed our comitment to free software > by only bundling free software on our CD's, and our commitment to > useful distribution and our social contract by packaging and > supporting the other software that did not meet our guidelines but > was useful to our users. > > I like the fact we can cater to people who like free software > (never put non-free in your apt sources), as well as to people who > just want a useful distribution -- and we can, gently, try to win > them over to free alternatives wehre such exist. We offer a choice, > we do not impose. We evangelize, we do not force. > > Those who think this does not help Debian obviously have not > really thought it through. > > This GR is disturbin. It throws away the promises made in the > social contract. It is exclusionary. It reduces the utility of Debian > to a number of users, and thus would marginalize us into a non > entity. And it makes us committed to the free distribution, as > opposed to the best free distribution. > > I am not convinced that this is a good idea. > > manoj > -- > As I was passing Project MAC, I met a Quux with seven hacks. Every > hack had seven bugs; Every bug had seven manifestations; Every > manifestation had seven symptoms. Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and > hacks, How many losses at Project MAC? > Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/> > 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E > 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% another posting pasted from same list: %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% On Wed, Jun 07, 2000 at 10:31:21AM -0400, Branden Robinson wrote: > A brave assertion. But then you have to think about this carefully-crafted > document and wonder why it doesn't read like this: > > 5. We Will Support Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards > > We will maintain "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for > this software. We encourage CD manufacturers to read the licenses of > software packages in these directories and determine if they can > distribute that software on their CDs. We will support the use of > non-free software in Debian, and we will provide infrastructure (such as > our bug-tracking system and mailing lists) for non-free software > packages. nice idea. i propose that we modify the Social Contract so that it does say that. Anyone willing to second this? > So? Why doesn't it read like that? an oversight. it seemed self-evident and obvious at the time. craig -- craig sanders
