On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Matthew Garrett wrote: > The reason we don't include free software that has non-free > dependencies in main is that we want to discourage people from using > non-free software. If the user already has non-free code in ROM, > then there is the same amount of non-free software being used.
It's not necessarily to discourage them, it's so that they know when they're using non-free software, and so that we know what free software has non-free dependencies, helping to indicate what should be reimplemented as free software. If we wanted to discourage people from using non-free software, we would make vrms Priority: Required, Essential: Yes, and install a cronjob that e-mailed the known world saying that the admin was a proprietary software floozie and slept with Bill Gates. Don Armstrong -- If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too. -- W. Somerset Maugham http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
