[Branden Robinson - Wed, 31 Dec 2003 03:13:03 PM CST]
> Please define "decent alternative for that infrastructure". What
> specifically do you expect people to be able to accomplish with a
> parallel infrastructure when the existing suffices?
I'm not sure what the original post's definition was, but I'd define it
as "something for which no free alternative exists"---for instance,
kanji support in Ghostscript and PDF readers is only available through
"non-free" means. Currently, at any rate. Or Arabic support in TeX.
Or gif support in image manipulation utilities---although that's less of
a problem, because of other image formats and because of PNG. Someone's
native language, however, well... is their native language.
Actually, if we could raze non-free of spurious utilities (like games
or gif support) and provide installers for the more serious ones, then
that would be one implementation of the resolution that I wouldn't have a
problem with. The documentation packages in non-free could be replaced
with something that would download the docs and incorporate them in dwww
or doc-central, for example, and the installer would be licensed free
though what it installed wouldn't.
> we don't have an "alternative infrastructure" in place before dropping
> Debian's support for non-free, then there is a "pragmatic" objection to
> dropping non-free; however, if the alternative infrastructure is expected
> to be in wide use, then the people who participate in the current
> infrastructure are going to have to migrate to it pro-actively in
> expectation that a GR elimninating will pass, which they can help defeat
> by refusing to move and citing their own stubbornness as evidence that
> no "alternative infrastructure" exists.
Like GPG versus PGP? Or ssh.com versus OpenSSH? I usually don't see
people leveraging that kind of argument of "stubbornness" to any great
degree. I don't recall any intense firestorms of stubbornness when
Debian switched to GPG, or when ssh.com sank under the awesomeness of
OpenSSH. Whatever was "better" won, and I think most people wouldn't
use non-free if viable free alternatives existed---otherwise the
predominant SSH server/client software would still be ssh.com rather
than OpenSSH.
--
"Hawk, we're going to die." "Never say die... and
certainly never say we."
-- M*A*S*H
