On Sat, Sep 30, 2000 at 05:21:04PM -0500, Joseph Carter wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 01:39:34AM +1100, Peter Eckersley wrote:
> > > No. There's nothing wrong if someone feels dissapointed if "no" wins by 80%.
> > > It would mean that a brutal majority of the Debian developers care little
> > > about the politics of the Project. I would not find that result very
> > > amusing, that's for sure.
> >
> > Hi. I'm not a Debian developer (yet :), but I've got to say that that is
> > a very illogical claim.
> >
> > It is entirely consistent to believe very strongly in the creation of a
> > completely free operating system, but at the same time to believe that
> > *pragmatically*, the best way to achieve widespread use of this OS is
> > by keeping around a few packages of non-free software, until the free
> > alternatives are clearly *better*.
>
> That's the whole point of this proposal. John feels that non-free has
> outlived its usefulness and should be purged now since the vast majority
> of people no longer need it (other than the software they already have
> installed, which wouldn't go away just because the packages did
> naturally..)
>
> I just ran vrms to see what it found on my system:
>
> some fonts, gpg modules, lha, mpg123, netscape, quake-lib, xanim
>
> The gpg modules I use for Debian - my RSA key has been unofficially
> retired. I plan to mail a revokation at the end of the year. lha can be
> made useless now that I have permission to re-pack quake-lib's upstream
> without it. netscape I won't need as soon as I have Mozilla's next
> milestone with SSL. mpg123 will be obsolete when I find the CD with these
> 4 old tracks whose mp3s don't play with xmms so I can re-rip them with ogg
> vorbis. What's that leave? fonts, quake-lib, and xanim? Please.
Well, because you have no use for most of the stuff in non-free, it don't mean
that other people have not need of it.
Even if the people needing it are just a few one.
That said, maybe we could make a survey or something such, to see what
packages are in non-free, who uses them, and if it would be possible to use a
free replacement.
This would possibly clarify what will actually happen.
Friendly,
Sven LUTHER
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