All,
<personal background>
Just my 0.02 Euro / USD 0.02 / ?0.01.
I've been using Debian now for about 9 years. I advocate it everywhere
I go. I run five computers at my work on Debian, despite the "official"
Linux being Red Hat Enterprise. I generally have around 5-7
computers at home running Debian and I've been around since Debian 1.2 :)
[And I'm a DD ]
This story comes up every now and again. Anything outside Debian main
_isn't Debian_ : our documents say so. We also stress that we'll allow
folk to run non-DFSG software on top of a Debian system and we won't
discriminate against them or make things hard for them - but they're
running Debian plus other stuff (and it's the plus other stuff that's
important here). We even maintain obsolete/obsolescent libs in main so
that people can run things like Corel WordPerfect IIRC.
Knoppix/Morphix/Libranet/Corel/Xandros/Storm Linux {we|a}re all
_non-Debian_ but we don't call people names for using them and help them
if they want to move across to Debian served from Debian servers :)
My bias is that I want everything I use to be Free Software in the DFSG
sense: it makes my life easier at work since I know I can copy it all
and distribute lots of copies and it means that I can give out
DFSG-compliant CD's at Expos with a clear conscience. I'm not prepared
to use non-free software at all for my own purposes at home - I'd
like non-free NVIDIA drivers but won't use them on principle - but I'm
constrained to use non-free software at work and obliged to have MS Windows
around for my daughter for educational software and educational purposes.
</personal background>
This does _NOT_ address the GFDL / non-free documentation "thing" -
I'm thinking here of all the other packages in non-free and contrib for
the moment. One mountain at a time :)
Here's a potentially acceptable compromise: get Bruce Perens' UserLinux
/ Xandros / Libranet/ Gibraltar/?? HP ?? to form a small non-profit
venture to work on non-free on a non-competitive basis.
The commercial users of Debian are likely to want non-free and contrib
packages for their own purposes. If they were to provide a non-free
package pool for mutual benefit backed by commercial companies - programmers
who wanted to maintain non-free/contrib packages could do so either for
no pecuniary benefit or perhaps for a salary/payment in kind/whatever not
as Debian maintainers per se but in an independent capacity.
Someone could still provide the BTS services if they wished: Debian folk
could still lobby for more stuff to be packaged natively as .debs /
non-free code to be maintained / licences to be changed / write free
alternatives.
Debian-legal could still be used as a point of mutual reference on what
software is DFSG-free.
How does this sound?
Andy
