Raul Miller wrote: > > I wish I knew why you think it's evil for Debian to distribute non-free. > > > > You've stated that it's an ethical issue for you. You've drawn an analogy > > with illegal drugs. You've stated that it's not good for Debian's > > developers or users [regardless of any good that the software does, > > and regardless of any freeness in that software]. > > > > But your arguments seem to be circular -- without basis.
On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 04:43:13PM +0100, Sergey V. Spiridonov wrote: > I will try to present an example. Let's say we have program 'A' without > permition to distribute modified sources. It's not absolutely non-free - > you have freedom to learn how program works, to modify it for your own > needs, to distribute it without modifications. It is unique and there is > no free analog. > > If developer agrees with such a limitation he is not able to modify this > program to help his friend to adapt it for his needs. Developer will not > be able to distribute modifications to others who also need such an > improvenment. This contradicts human ethics, because help is ethical. > > Any single person can decide to ignore this non-ethical limitation on > helping other people (and will act ethical, because helping other people > is more ethical than violating the will of author in this case). Debian > is not able to act this way because of the legal issues (and legality is > important, otherwise Debian will not survive). So, by agreeing to such a > licence, Debian compel himself to non-ethical actions. Ok, I agree this is an issue. But, it's just one constraint -- there are other issues. The most important ones are: [*] program 'A' also has value as reading material [*] if program 'A' is modular, Developer might adapt it to his friend's needs without modifying it (by changing the environment in which it operates). [*] preventing the distribution of program 'A' to people who need it also contradicts human ethics (unless something at least as adequate for that need is distributed instead). I do think it's important to let people know to have lower expectations for non-free software than for software in main. I think we need to do this better than what we're doing now. I don't see a basis here for preventing distribution of all of non-free by Debian. I do agree that there's an ethical problem here, but I think a blanket prohibition on non-free makes that problem a worse problem. To use your medical analogy, this is something like triage (sorting patients in emergency medicine). If we sort packages based on likely benefit, we should exclude from non-free software which has not enough benefit or negative benefit. But there should still be a place in non-free for software which has positive benefit, even if that benefit is not the highest benefit. Thanks, -- Raul
