On 06/30/2015 01:38 PM, Matt wrote:
Hello,
I am a very long time Debian system admin its obvious why I am here at the
Devuan junction so I will spare a longer introduction to this mailing list(its
my first post).
I remember coming across this topic on a previous post but did not get a clear
end goal answer. there is a old relevant argument which is more free GPL or
BSD I believe the answer is simple, BSD provides more individual freedom and
GPL freedom as a society which forces others to respect freedom(both are free),
kinda like only the king in society is truely free for society at large to be
free we I'll loose a certain freedom, which is to impose nonfree rules upon
others. That little tidbit of philosophy is a little outside my point but good
food for thought.
I would like to lobby this project into offering a Libre installation medium.
Debian even though not endorsed by the FSF as truly libre has done a great job
at separating free and nonfree it has also made its installation medium binary
blob free with the option of adding them during installation or afterwards. I
liked this approach since I would prefer to have packages in my system that I
can reproduce exact binaries by compiling them myself and test those builds and
for everything in my system to be freedom respecting if possible, but still
have the option to make computers or hardware work that require these silly
blobs. My guess would be Devuan will be taking this same approach since its
parent is already this way but there were some other posts in this mailing list
that made it sound otherwise cause its about freedom of choice.
I would like to add that because of more enforced free licenses like the GPL as
opposed to the BSD are good reasons that the community and opensource has
flourished as a whole IMO and this principle of a libre starting point with the
option of adding blobs and nonfree repos is a fundamental building block that
allows for the most ideal starting point. I know its not a direct correlation
comparing the BSD and GPL (since both are free) to the devuan installation
medium but my point is that it would be nice if devuan made it easy to do the
freedom respecting thing from beginning with options for fully individual
freedom of nonfree upon install.
so to start with a completely free system with the option to use nonfree as a
individual freedom like Debian is something I hope devuan will continue.
The differences between Debian and Devuan have to do with default init
setup and differences in opinion about cost/benefit
wrt to Systemd. At most, these differences rise to the level of design
philosophy-- Unix vs. whatever else. But those
differences have absolutely nothing to do with software licensing.
I think anyone who wants to revisit Debian's current free/nonfree repo
structure, or its stance wrt licensing, should get their desired changes
merged into Debian itself. Then, and only then, should Devuan consider
them.
Doing it that way would have two important consequences:
* any improvements to the current infrastructure would benefit two
projects instead of just one
* since Devuan is small (or at least publicly so), prospective changes
to Debian are more likely to hit a wider variety of eyeballs with a
larger knowledge base.
Issues surrounding licenses are extremely complex, and often non-obvious
unless you're a lawyer. One wants to be sure that changes affecting
distribution of free and nonfree software are only made because an
exhaustive critique didn't turn up any showstoppers in the security,
usability, or legal realm. I'm not convinced that Devuan even has an
expert in the legal realm, increasing the likelihood of a seemingly
small "improvement" in this area having unintended and pernicious
side-effects which no one here has the ability to fix.
Please don't become an object lesson in tragic irony-- if it ain't
broke, don't fix it.
-Jonathan
Thanks.
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