On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 07:45:33PM -0600, Shawn Yarbrough wrote: > Can a Debian user make a comment here? > > I am not a Debian developer, although I am a professional developer and > administrator. Having read most of this thread and some similar past > threads: there is a big point that everybody always seems to miss: > > > Debian is not 100% free software. Debian is non-free software. > Debian is not 100% free software. Debian is non-free software. > Debian is not 100% free software. Debian is non-free software. > > > I repeated that statement because you developers floating around up here > in legalistic-definition land are missing the point. Out here in the > real world, if Debian servers are distributing non-free software, and > more importantly, if Debian installer software by default conspiciously > offers to install that non-free software onto Debian user's systems, > then Debian as a whole is non-free in the eyes of 99.999% of it's > users. RMS is not being pedantic on this point, he's being extremely > realistic. You folks can sit up here all day long and define different > theoretical definitions about how "this free part of Debian is really > Debian" and "this non-free part of Debian is not really Debian" but to > us real human beings it's all Debian, see?
But is that because of what's contained in "non-free" or is that because of the name "non-free"? Note that, at the moment, some of the content which RMS is responsible for distributing we redistribute from "non-free". Maybe what needs to be done is draw a line *within* non-free, and eliminate some of the more objectionable material. For example, perhaps, we should stop distributing material which can't be distributed to all users. And, if it would make people think a bit more before posting, maybe we should name it something other than "non-free" [though doing that right still probably means changing the social contract]. Logic is great, but its results are meaningless unless you start from a meaningful position. -- Raul