On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 12:15:07AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 02:07:21PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote: > > One point why I am a 'remove non-free proponent' is because I feel that > > the 'keep non-free proponents' failed to actually cut down on non-free's > > size in the past.
> Size of non-free (by source package) in: > > bo - 69 > hamm - 183 > slink - 225 > potato - 220 > woody - 208 > sarge - 181 > sid - 193 > But personally, I don't think reducing the size of non-free is a goal. > If, tomorrow, we get an email from Bill Gates saying "hey, if you want > to include all the Windows 95 and 98 stuff in non-free, that'd be great; > unfortunately we can't give you the source, but we'd be happy for you > to distribute it -- it might make Wine work better, eg", then I think > that'd be great and useful, even if it increases the size of non-free > by a gigabyte and (somehow) increases the number of packages in there > by tenfold. This seems like a pretty good example of how sometimes, distributing non-free software ultimately benefits... no one except for non-free software authors. If Bill Gates sent such an email tomorrow, I would not instantly discard my opinion, formed after years of observation, that the man is a slimy weasel with no real understanding of users needs or the benefits of aesthetics in software design, and I would conclude that the only possible reason for such an offer would be that he derives some commercial benefit from either 1) retarding the development of free replacement DLLs by the Wine project by removing the itch, or 2) making himself look like a nice guy. While there are certainly those who would derive short-term benefit from having genuine MS DLLs available to apt-get, there is a larger question of whether the long-term impact would negate the short-term benefits. This is one way in which the "our users and free software" duality is useful: it reminds us that our decisions need to be evaluated for their effect on *both* of our intertwined priorities, because what seems to be obviously advantageous for our users may prove not-so-advantageous because of the detrimental effect it has on free software with a concomitant impact on the user's experience (or vice versa). Not everything that helps a user solve a perceived immediate problem is a clear win. Not everything that tries to help users by promoting independence from proprietary software in the long term is a clear win, either. In this case, it's definitely not clear (to Debian as a whole) whether "keep non-free because it's useful" or "drop/phase out non-free because not depending on non-free software is valuable" is the winning strategy. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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