Package: dpkg Version: 1.4.0.31 Severity: wishlist "Richard" == Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Many different practical reasons "encourage" or pressure people to > use non-free software. Proprietary software developers make great > efforts to create such reasons. [...] > On the 20th anniversary of starting the GNU project, five years from > now, I hope that it won't be necessary for me to launch a new > project to develop a complete *free* operating system. I hope that > GNU/Linux will still be one. But will it be? Only if people stand > firm.
Richard, I think that your ultimate point, which is that point of the GPL as I read it, is to encourage free software and the community of sharing. And I think that we have shown that Debian cares a great deal about this issue as well, and has shown dedication in propogating it. However, your issue is with how non-free relationships are presented in dselect. I'm sure you're not against us packaging any non-free packages, as that would mean basically the utter removal of non-free and contrib sections in our distribution, and I haven't seen you ask that. So barring that, I think we can change the dselect interface to accomodate your worry. As you may know, no package in the main Debian distribution may 'depend' or 'recommend' a non-free package. The 'suggests' relationship, which is only intepreted by dselect, needs to have it's GUI mechanics tuned so that relationships with non-free packages are *presented* without actually causing users to worry that they need that package. I think that can be done pretty simply with some verbage in dselect. This message is a bug against dpkg to formulate this verbage and implement it in dselect. I hope IWJ has a chance to consider and implement this; he's always very careful and complete about these things. -- .....Adam Di [EMAIL PROTECTED]<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
