Disregard whether or not Wine is useful. Two facts:
1. Wine is libre and doesn't do anything to steer users toward using
proprietary software. There's nothing wrong with it.
2. Ubuntu's repositories include Wine.
There is no reason to remove a libre program from Trisquel's repository just
because its main use is to run proprietary software.
> Wine is problematic software to be included in any of free software
distributions. Why? It is not aligned with free software philosophy and
guidelines:
Considering whether a program aligns ideologically with you makes no sense.
Linux is not ideologically aligned with the libre software movement, either.
If a program gives the users the four freedoms, it's libre, end of
discussion. There's nothing wrong with having a program's developer having a
different viewpoint.
As a side note, I hate the way the word "problematic" gets used. I used to
think of this word as meaning "causes a problem", but it seems the way people
use it, the only thing it means is "I don't like it". It's used as a weasel
word.
> Because majority of users will be searching for Wine, they will come to
Trisquel, and what is happening then? People are divided.
What majority of users will be searching for Wine? Why would you expect this?
Anyone who knows about Wine in the first place knows what it is, and I don't
see why anyone would think it reasonable to search for the name of an
alcoholic beverage in the software repository.
It doesn't matter, anyway. Ideological hegemony is not something we need to
have. If a user believes that proprietary Windows games are acceptable, this
is not a problem. Everyone is entitled to their views. In fact, if I'm not
mistaken, we have a few active users on this forum who are of this opinion.
> That clearly shows rejection of the user, who did nothing else but found
wine in the free software distribution, and instead of learning what is free
software, he logically asks other users to help him install games, which are
not free. The community answer is "no, we don't support you to install
non-free games" -- but why in the first place was Wine included in the
distribution then?! To divide users?
Wine was included because Ubuntu included it, and there's no need to remove a
perfectly good libre program just because the job it does is not a job we are
likely to need to do (running Windows software).
> By including Wine, Mame, and any other such emulator which is basically
platform for non-free software, free software distribution falls into
hypocrisy and encourages users to go to homepages, dedicated to support,
download or run non-free software, which makes absolutely no sense.
If Trisquel was adding Wine, FCEUX, ZSNES, and other such programs into its
repository, I would say that this is a waste of time, because these programs
are mostly useless. But that is not the case. What's happening with Trisquel
is Ubuntu already has these programs in its repository, so Trisquel gets
them, too.
Including libre software that happens to be mostly useless is not
"hypocrisy". Including software whose developers disagree with you is not
"hypocrisy".
You're making a stink about nothing.
