Anthony DeRobertis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Nov 2, 2003, at 00:04, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>
>> What do you mean, without a mandate? If the GR passes with a
>> landslide, woudn't that be a mandate?
>
> Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the landslide just means people don't want
> to loudly proclaim Debian's support of non-free software anymore?
I support Branden's proposal but I don't support the removal of
non-free. You could claim that I'm just persuaded by Branden's style
(or whatever) but I do think it is a sane and consisten opinion.
None of my packages is in neither non-free nor contrib and I don't
have any packages from neither of these installed. I think the last
non-free thing I had installed was netscape and gpg-{idea,rsa} (wasn't
they in non-us/non-free?). But this doesn't mean that I believe that
non-free is unnecesary forever. The next killer application might be
distributable but non-free and it might take som time to have a free
replacement.
Yes, Apt repositories does make it easy to have unofficial sources but
I like having a single source of packages. I have trust in Debian and
I would like to have my packages from someone who agrees that is is
suboptimal with a non-free solution.
I wouldn't have the same trust in a non-free.org replicate of Debian
to keep true to the open source-ideal while keeping a pragmatic
apporach.
But pragmatism aside I don't think it belongs in our Social Contract
with the comunity. Distribution of non-free works is not the goal of
Debian and they are a kind of second class packages. The Social
Contract describes our common goals, beliefs and ideolegy.
There are some that have dificulty differencing between ideology and
pragmatic apporoach. I like being able to differentiate between them
otherwise the world becomes purely black and white rather fast.
--
Peter Makholm | The four letter word beginning with L?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | It's life, love, libc or lisp
http://hacking.dk | -- Depending on you point of view
