On 2004-01-03 02:27:14 +0000 Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
wrote:
Almost all the support for non-free in Debian is a free result of
our support for free software. [...]
none of them would be significantly simpler
or even different if we didn't support non-free. [...]
I disagree with your choice of "significantly". Besides the time,
space and consistency improvements, I think it also makes Debian
easier to explain.
Basically, the issue is why spend 100 man hours on maintaining Debian,
then another 90 man hours on maintaining a separate non-free
repository,
when you can spend 101 man hours maintaining Debian and it's existing
support for non-free?
Further, I disagree with your time estimates. The time spent on
non-free is not directly related to time spent on Debian, either now
or in the future. People are already spending time on non-free rather
than on Debian and I think it likely that DD time is spent on non-free
when it could be done by non-DDs. Basically, the issue is why waste
any DD hours and project facilities on maintaining non-Debian things
when you can spend all that on Debian?
I also think that there will be benefits of new developers, supporters
and collaborators if we let non-free go.
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
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