A couple weeks ago, Frans Pop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My rough summary: - (almost) everybody agrees that non-free drivers don't belong in main; - (almost) everybody agrees that sourceless firmware at least needs to be distributable before any kind of support can be considered; - most people agree that Etch should not be delayed for a solution to the sourceless firmware issue; - a fair number of people (though a percentage is hard to estimate) seem to feel that the current Social Contract is too restrictive when it comes to some types of files, forms of documentation and sourceless firmware; - probably a larger number feels that we should not kill the project by scaring away users with hardware that depends on sourceless firmware and is willing to consider solutions for that while still making the projects preference for firmware _with_ source clear to users and others.
...
loading such packages from contrib/non-free would imply that these sections have to be added by default to the sources list for these users which is undesirable given the aims of the project
It strikes me that our difficulty here is very similar to that behind the "special exception" written into GPLv2. It's a bootstrapping issue which exists in part because the free software communities need to co-exist with the non-free-software communities. One obvious issue is that the sources list is relevant in contexts where a person has access to the sources, and that installation typically happens when a person only has access to installation media. I think it's upsetting for some people to think about the fact that some people cannot run their computer system without software which, in some sense, we cannot maintain. In the context of the current discussion, such software is free (in terms of licensing fees), but not free (in the DFSG sense). Put differently, I think a lot of the angst, here, is centered around the idea that we should deprecate Contrib and Non-Free. Given how this issue has progressed, I think it's rather clear that we are not yet in a position to do that. Put differently, in the past we have washed our hands of issues associated with distributing Non-Free on different sorts of media. In essence: "We are just making this available, but you're on your own when dealing with the legalities of this stuff." No one wants to deal with that problem, but that just makes the problem crop up in other ways. Especially, since it looks like [by our standards], the linux kernel currently belongs in Non-Free -- that's just painful for us to think about. No one wants the kernel to be in Non-Free, especially with how we've been trying to wash our hands of non-free. And yet those very reasons for us "washing our hands" are the sorts of reasons that would suggest it belongs in Non-Free. Perhaps we need something analogous to the GPL's "special exception" in our social contract? Something that lets us boot and run Debian on systems with special requirements, without suggesting that we will give up on our efforts to maintain and support free software. In other words, something like amendment text B at http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_004 might be a good thing. But I think our current attitude towards non-free is off balance. And I think the fact that we cannot put reasonably the kernel in Non-Free, even though our standards say it should be in Non-Free, illustrates something about how our current attitudes are broken. And, no, I don't have a solution. ["Make copyright law make sense so that copyright issues can be dealt with in a sensible fashion" is an example of "not a solution".] But I can easily understand why so many people are unhappy and/or upset. -- Raul -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
