Quoting Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 10:27:04PM +0100, Jérôme Marant wrote: > > Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > >> Why would I? > > > > > > Yeah, you see that is the whole problem. This whole plan to remove > > > non-free is highly dependent of the non-free package maintainer finding > > > the time for putting up this non-free parallel infrastructure. Time we > > > could be spending on more usefull things. > > > > non-free maintainers could also spend their time on packaging free > > software instead of non-free software :-) > > Yeah, sure. Without the non-free package i maintain, i would have no > internet access (or windows only internet access, yik), so my work for > debian will be much less efficient.
You don't need a package, you only need to install a driver. Your internet access has nothing to do with a package whatsoever. > Also, in case we decide to drop non-free, i will probably stop packaging > the non-free stuff (and spam any user request about it to the non-free > removal advocates :), and maintain the package only for my own benefit. Why isn't it impossible to put such a package somewhere on the net? Why do you absolutely need a debian.org machine? I think your arguments are straw-man arguments :-) > > > Also, it is a bit hypocrit to find it ok to have non-free back then when > > > you needed netscape and acroread, but today that you don't need them > > > anymore, you want to remove non-free without regard for the other people > > > whose non-free need are not yet eliminated by equivalent free software. > > > > I can bet that there are less and less people using non-free. Anyway, if I > > needed a non-free software, I wouldn't mind grabbing a package from > > another location than a debian.org machine. Really I don't see > > any annoyance. > > Yeah. Did you try java on ppc lately ? i had to build jboss > professionally, jboss being a free software which could probably go in > contrib if someone packaged it, but neither kaffe nor the jdk 1.3 > available as .deb would work, and the ibm jdk 1.4 was only available as > .rpm. That said, kaffe is almost there, so in the future i believe that > it should be ok. One should encourage kaffe improvements rather than encouraging the use of the non-free jdk. > But the problem is not that because most people don't need a given part > of non-free anymore, that we should stop working on the others. My > position on this is that we keep non-free, that we take a more precise > look on packages in there, remove the broken or obsolete ones, and > orient the users to free replacement while warning them about missing > features, and orient interested developers to the projects developing > free replacements. Also, i think that archiving and making publicly > available the discussion concerning licence changes would be a good > thing. The problem is that people are OK with living with non-free packages and don't want license changes. > This way, the debian project would be actively involved in freeing the > individual non-free packages, thus increasing the freedom of our users, > instead of just droping non-free and letting people need them in the > jungle of private apt repositories or alienised packages, or to migrate > to another distrib. I also fear that some of the proponent of dropping > non-free have hidden agendas, namely that third party debian based > distrib will so have more added value for selling their own distrib. Not > sure if i agree with that, and if they want to make money on selling > non-free, i want a share of that as non-free package maintainer :)). > > Anyway, all in all, removing non-free is a short sighted idea, which > will be nothing more than a political staement, but in the long run will > not strengthen the position of debian nor enhance the freedom of our > users. > Also remember our roots. Remember the times when ocaml was in non-free. > I am convinced that i had a much better standing with the licence > discusion with the ocaml team as if non-free was not existing. removing > non-free is an antagonism and a menace to the non-free authors, while a > licence change could easier be attained by working together. If ocaml were still non-free, it would have had less success and probably some people would have written a free alternative. Currently, OCaml is still problematic with QPL though. > > > And i cast a doubt on the quality of any such third party > > > infrastructure. > > > > What quality? The only missing part would be the BTS, which can be > > easily installed elsewhere. The other parts of the infrastructure > > are never used for non-free packages: as I said non-free packages > > are _not_ autobuilt, so basicaly non-free in debian is a package > > repository. > > Yep, and migration of BTS bugs. I also like having all my packages in a > overview in the PTS, as well as the testing script. Also there are the > autobuilders. Do you really think this parallel architecture would > continue maintaining m68k or arm or some other such slow arch ? Do you > think it would be ok to remove non-free, but continue building non-free > stuff on the debian architecture ? Sure they don't get autobuilt, but > you can log in the other arches box and build your stuff. How often have > i done that for ocaml when it was in non-free ? And how long will it be > before the non-free repository becomes a paying one or something such ? You can still have access to those machines for building your non-free stuff. They all have a chroot. > All in all, the remove nonfree defendent are people who don't really see > longer than the end of they nose (do you say that in english too ?). I'm sorry Sven but again, you gave nothing but straw-man arguments :-) > Anyway, i have broken my promise, i didn't want to discuss this here, as > it is not the right place. I will see if i can come for SolutionsLinux, > and we can then meet on the february FirstJeudi and discuss this, or > earlier on the irc channel. You broke your promise but you started the debate ... -- Jérôme Marant
