On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 05, 2001 at 02:42:53AM -0700, Bdale Garbee wrote:
> > I do not want to see non-free more readily available,
> > I would in fact like for it to wither and die. That's not contrary to the
> > needs of commercial interests,
>
> You surely meant "proprietary interests" here. Commercial interests and free
> software have never conflicted in a fundamental way. It slips through a
> couple of other times in your mail, but I won't nag you by pointing them
> out.
Just my POV:
The reasons for the existance of non-free have nothing to do with either
"proprietary interests" or "commercial interests"! The reason for non-free
stem from the existance of programs with licenses that fail the DFSG.
(note, this is _not_ equivelant to either "proprietary" or "commerial")
Nothing more, nothing less. Many of the licenses in non-free meet two out
of three requirements of the DFSG (1. Provide Source, 2. Allow
Modification, 3. Allow Distribution of Modified Binaries), but even the
worst license (in MHO that would be Pine) allows distribution of source,
or it couldn't even go into non-free.
While many programs, Pine as the prime example, haven't gotten a better
license as a result of their tenure in non-free, many _have_ gotten
better licenses because non-free brought their license issues to light
along with their inherent usefulness as programs.
Because of our source format, which divorces the Debian changes from the
original source by placing them in separate files (this is sometimes a
difficulty, but mostly works just fine), we can even distribute Pine, but
only because we have non-free. If we were a build-from-source type distro,
we could relax the last requirement and put Pine in main (Heaven forbid)
and have no problems with the "freedom of speech" issues found in Free
Software. The fact that we recognized from the start that we were working
from a higher standard than that is (paradoxically) what forces the
recognition/creation of a non-free section in the archives.
Sorry for the longish rant, but I'm just tired of seeing the usual
misdirection I find in everyday politics mirrored in a Debian discussion.
The reasons for non-free have nothing to do with our lofty ideals and
obvious disdain for anyone who would make money using free sofware or any
other kind. (which, by the way, includes my hunble self)
The reasons for non-free are very pragmatic and have more to do with the
maxmum freedom of choice from the "available" sofware pool. Offering such
software is not a cop out to our ideals, but an expression of just how far
we will go for the freedom of our users to choose between available items
of useful software, while strongly declaring our licensing principles.
non-free is the line we draw in the sand. Removing that line isn't in
anyone's best interest.
Sorry for the rant ;-)
Waiting is,
Dwarf
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