Remi Vanicat wrote:
"Sergey V. Spiridonov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Remi Vanicat wrote:
"Sergey V. Spiridonov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
In this case, I clearly disagree with you. By stopping to distribute
non-free we will decrease the amount of good, and so act non-ethical.
Where is this good, which we will decrease? Do you think that dropping
non-free will broke the upstream copy, or it will destroy the copy of
those who downloded it? Where is the harm?
it is the documentation of a free software. We loose. It will be the
only thing that removing non-free will do to our user : losing the
nowadays integration of non-free stuff to debian.
By stopping to distribute non-free Debian will reduce the amount of good
he *can* do. He will also reduce the amount of non-ethical action he is
compeled to do. Firstly let's look at the hypotetical example of Debian
which never distributed non-free. It is more simple then current
situation. If we will got an agreement on this example, we can easely
decide on the current situtation.
Let's say we have Debian without non-free. There is a package which is
non-free but is useful for users. Debian has two options: to accept it
or to reject. By accepting non-free package Debian compel himself to
non-ethical actions in future. Debian acts ethicaly accepting non-free
package, but not as much as possible if the package will be free.
By rejecting non-free package Debian does not increase the amount of
good actions he *can* do.
It seems that refusing to increase the amount of good things, one *can*
do, is non-ethical even if doing this will compel to non-ethical
actions. I do not agree with this in this case.
It is very important for Debian to act ethically all the time. Why?
Debian is non-profit organisation. For commercial enterprise which main
goal is to get more money it is reasonable to act not on the highest
ethical level, because the goal is not that high. This is not the case
with Debian. Debian goal is to help people (to produce good, to act very
ethically). By compelling himself to non-ethical actions Debian is not
able to go to his goal that effective that he can. By choosing to
distribute free-only software Debian will act on the very high level,
directly going to his goal, helping people.
--
Best regards, Sergey Spiridonov
