Raul Miller wrote:
Is it very clever(ethical) to increase users dependency on non-free even
more?
You're asking several different things here and maybe saying something
I disagree with at the same time.
Are we increasing users dependency on non-free? How?
By distributing non-free Debian increases users dependency. As I said
users are less educated (because they are users) in complicated
questions. They tend to ingnore complicated issues of the software
licensing. On the other side there are users who value Debian very much
because it is the most free OS in the world.
And what about the reverse?
If someone has to use some other operating system because they can't
use ours without some non-free package, what does that mean?
This mean that efforts should be concentrated on creating free
replacements. Those who really need non-free will probably not choose
Debian anyway. Other distributions (like Suse, Red Hat) provide a lot of
non-free already intergrated in their distributions.
If we make it easy to move from free-to-redistribute but
doesn't-satisfy-all-guidelines packages to totally free packages, what
does that mean?
This mean that no one will need non-free software.
For example, if we spend a few email messages on non-free, is that bette
or worse than spending some extra machines and the effort to build a
parrallel distribution?
Probably it is an answer. I don not feel myself able to convince you.
But you are reasonable and convince me. Debian depends on non-free more
than one can think. It is nearly impossible to drop non-free. Without
non-free Debian will not have a lot of value. This is the end. ;)
--
Best regards, Sergey Spiridonov
