Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Necessary for what purpose?
On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 11:25:51AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > You seem to be saying that there are lots of necessary things in > non-free. It's the pro-non-free people who have been saying how > necessary it is. I'm assuming that you have some sense of what that > word means for you, and that we could work from there towards a common > understanding. A variety of purposes, yes. Satisfying a variety of needs for a variety of people, yes. Whether or not this qualifies as "lots" is a different issue. > We can work out the details of what is the standard of necessity. I > already gave some suggestions that I might accept: hardware drivers > for closed drivers, non-free documentation for free software, for > example. I agree that those are in the set. > > Lots of people seem to be taking the view that if they personally don't > > need anything in non-free, that means that something's broken. > > I haven't heard anyone take that view. I said that wrong. However: [a] most of the people who advocate dumping non-free do not have a personal need for any of it, and [b] most of the people who advocate dumping non-free do not state how dumping non-free is good for people who do have a need for some of it. The closest to [b] I've seen is a statement of the idea that people <<will get desperate and write better free software to address those needs>>. [As opposed to giving up and going with some other distribution.] But no one has presented any concrete facts to suggest that "people will write more software is a likely response" and "people will abandon debian" is an unlikely response. Personally, I think that until Debian is a lot more "developer friendly", "abandon debian" is the more likely response. [When -- perhaps -- independent sites, like maybe slashdot, freshmeat or lwn are saying how great Debian is for hacking/developing new software.] > > > I agree with you that the non-free packages need to exist. What I > > > disagree about is that it must be Debian's job to provide them. > > > > I agree that we shouldn't make any kinds of guarantees that we provide them. > > First, some people have been reading the social contract as if it were > a promise to provide non-free packages to users. I think you're overstating that case. I think you're confusing the distinction between practical promises (which might include non-free as an element) and specific promises about non-free (regardless of the ultimate value to the user). > > But that's not the same as agreeing that we should forbid them from > > being provided. > > We can't forbid them. How could we? What we can do is not make it > Debian's job to provide them. I meant there to be an implicit "with Debian" at the tail end of that sentence. We can forbid them from being provided from our archives. > > Right now, if there's some kind of copyright problem which doesn't prevent > > distribution, but which requires significant time to sort out, the > > package can be moved to non-free, until it's solved. > > How exactly does the presence of non-free, as opposed to non-free.org, > help this? That depends on whether non-free.org is a part of Debian or not. If it's not, then there's a whole bunch of coordination issues that need to be addressed. Or are you saying we should explicitly point our users at some non-debian outfit, if they want their system to work in a comprehensible fashion? > > In my experience, either [a] upstream genuinely wants the software to > > be free, or [b] upstream could care less. Who is it that cares about > > Debian and is satisfied with non-free? > > We hear of upstream maintainers sometimes say they want their stuff to > be in Debian, and say that it's important, but resist making it free. > An excellent example is the FSF, but there have been others. > > Moreover, why is it Debian's job to provide them advertising? That's easy: it's not Debian's job to provide them advertising. > > > But this may not really respond to your question; I could only guess > > > at just what you were looking for, so if it is not as responsive as > > > you'd like, then please amplify the question a little or explain in > > > more detail what the flexibility is that you have, and what about that > > > flexibility helps our goals. > > > > Well, for example, I want to be able to distribute documentation which > > has "no modify" clauses. > > Sure, but the question here is: can you explain why non-free.org is so > much worse than non-free? Note that BTS is far less relevant to a > documentation package... Well, for example: What happens when the copyright changes and we can distribute it? What happens when non-free.org messes up the package? How do we NMU non-free.org? Thanks, -- Raul
