The next release of Debian will not be accompanied by a non-free section; there will be no more stable releases of the non-free section. The Debian project will cease active support of the non-free section. Clause 5 of the social contract is repealed. Since this modifies the Social Contract, this requires a 3:1 vote majority to pass.
Debian Prepares To Vote On Non-Free Software
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Why?
But I don’t think Debian will gain much ground by becoming a RMS/GNU fundamentalist’s playground. Next thing they’ll call out the jihad against closed source software and start sending out mail bombs.
…I expect we’ll see a 3rd party site like backports.org providing an apt repository for non-free software.
okay, other then my genesis emulator, i don’t run non-free software in debian. the only thing their going to remove of significance is the nvidia driver (and possibly the closed source centrino driver when it comes out) so that’s the only thing i see this affecting…
Before accusing people about being fundamentalists (that means you, Kilian
, read up on why people want to remove non-free. Its not to wage a war on non-free software, but simply out of the recognition that maintaining non-free software is not commensurate with Debian’s goals as an organization. Bruce Perens made a good comment on Slashdot awhile ago about how the removal of non-free would work:
“Debian is huge. It’s long past the point that non-free could support its own organization.
When I created the original Debian Social Contract, non-free wouldn’t have been self-supporting. But we’ve had this hypocracy about non-free since then. Non-free is not officially part of Debian, but is maintained as part of Debian, using all of the same facilities and within the same organization. Debian can now afford to be 100% Free Software and no exceptions, and can put non-free somewhere else with people who care about it. APT will handle this very easily, there’s no overhead to the user except perhaps to change /etc/apt/sources.list once, which we can do for them with a script.”
So non-free most likely is not going away. Rather, its being spun-off, so two different organizations can concentrate on more specific goals. In the end, this will probably result in a better non-free for people to use.
news for me. Im a big fan of debian but was unimpressed by the absence of some of my favorite s/w.
This article jumped the gun a bit. It doesn’t even seem clear that the vote will happen. Appears the motion is 3.5 years old.
I’m serious. I never was a big fan of Debian so what do they mean by non-free? Commercial software? Non-OSS? Shady codecs like MPlayer tend to use for decoding video formats usually exclusive to Windows?
Eugenia, the article text is *very* misleading. The text you post has not been decided — it is a resolution under consideration that will be voted on. They way the current article is worded, it seems like the resolution has already passed.
Debian has something called the DFSG — The Debian Free Software Guidelines. You can read them here:
http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html#guidelines
The guidelines basically say that the software must be freely redistributable (ie. somebody can legally copy a Debian CD that contains the software) and that the source to the software must be available. It also includes some other constraints, such as saying that the license must not discriminate against any group of people, or restrict the usage of the software to a particular field.
when the next release is? I just took a look at http://www.distrowatch.com and it seems theres been a new debain release about every 1 1/2yrs, so the next one is going to be roughly late 2004/early 2005?
Oh, thanks.
Well, it’s an honorable goal but I think it might be a bad idea. Most people I know tend to use at least one closed-source software. They don’t really give a flying duck of politics: they just want something that works. Removing support and giving the burden to an external organisation that might not be as organised. Perens might shoot himself in the foot if his plan doesn’t work.
Then again, I’m not here to dictate what they should do. They’re free to do what they want and I’m free to choose another distro. That way, everybody is happy.
Yeah, the stable is a long time a commin. It is almost a running joke on the debian mailing lists. It will be a while before there is another one. The quality of the releases makes up for the (lack of) quantity (IMHO).
…and it is non-free as in speech not non-free as in beer.
Check out http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/08/
What about contrib??
Am I the only one reminded of Treebeard and the council of Ents in the Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, whenever anything regarding the Debian development process is mentioned?
Does this mean that X-Snow will not be included anymore in Debian? What is the use of a linux distribution without xsnow?!
Since the defining characteristic of software in contrib is its dependency on Non-Free software, I think it’s pretty much a given that it’d be dropped, too, if the proposal were to pass.
“It doesn’t even seem clear that the vote will happen.”
I think it’s pretty clear. At least one proposal on each side of the fence has the necessary number of seconds, and the proponents on both sides are eager to finally vote on this to settle the matter. Hopefully afterwards there’ll be fewer flamewars on the subject.
“Appears the motion is 3.5 years old.”
Oh, I see. You’re thinking of John Goerzen’s proposal which he put forward in 2000 (http://www.debian.org/vote/2000/vote_0008). It was put on hold pending changes to the voting system (http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/debian-vote-200211/msg0001…) and, whilst he has stated that he wishes to repropose it (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=1s…) he has not yet done so. Andrew Suffield’s proposal is not the same one.
It’s pity that that kind of extreme positions are taken. Great free applications like povray will be excluded from the official Debian stable and all derived applications are quite useless, like KPovModeller which depend on the povray.
I think that it might be only rational to do that, or something similar.
Debian is already quite huge. As for the amount of packages in the repositories no other distro come even close at the moment. And it is a whole lot of work to maintain and update all that stuff – which shows as slow development of new Debian releases too. If there is less software to be maintained, it might mean that new Debian releases will be out faster too.
Why should Debian itself try to maintain all the possible software on earth that can be used with Debian? Most distros leave it to users to decide what extra software they want to install anyway.
“Great free applications like povray will be excluded from the official Debian stable”
Why don’t we wait and see how the vote pans out, first, eh?
Povray is not in Debian stable, nothing from non-free is in Debian stable.
Non-free was just maintained by Debian, but not part of any Debian release. The vote is here to stop maintaining this section. Of course something like non-free will still exist somewhere, just like backports, on some non-official site, but il will not be maintained by Debian.
BTW the next major version of Povray should be DFSG-free, you can expect it in Debian stable as soon as it is released.
“Of course something like non-free will still exist somewhere, just like backports, on some non-official site, but il will not be maintained by Debian.”
But this fabled external repository that the drop-Non-Free proponents claim will magically spring forth once Non-Free is dropped may not necessarily:
a) have access to so many different architectures – yes, Non-Free is not autobuilt, but many buildd maintainers will still build the packages on request
b) even have a BTS (backports.org certainly doesn’t)
c) be centralised to the same degree – perhaps it’ll be an extension of the current game of “hunt-the-backport” on backports.org, where some backports aren’t even listed, or there’re multiple backports of the same package with no mention of what the differences (if any) are
d) have access to a mirror network as extensive as that of Debian
e) follow Debian packaging policy (a big drop in packaging quality)
f) be run by Debian developers, meaning it’ll be an inherently less trustworthy source
Unless it can be shown that Non-Free will continue to be supported at the same level (see above for some examples) as it is now, I think the status quo should be maintained. After all, Debian maintains Non-Free as a service to its users.
Even if they managed to successfully spin it off without lowering the quality, it’d still be wasteful duplication of effort. They’d have to replicate large swathes of the Debian infrastructure (albeit on a smaller scale). I suspect that’d be a fair amount of work, that could be better spent on helping Debian in other ways.
Nonetheless, *if* they did manage to set such a repository up beforehand and demonstrate it to be of a comparable standard from the users’ point of view, I’d have nothing against moving Non-Free there. But hey, they haven’t yet done so.
RMS has stated many times that the only thing stopping Debian from being the “official” GNU distro is that non-free software is included on the same mirror’s as free software. I really hope this isn’t the motivation here. It certainly will make it a lot less of a hassle for mirror sites to mirror Debian repositories. Woody currently has over 8,000 packages, Sarge has in excess of 10,000 packages, Sid far exceeds 12,000 packages… for those of use that are a little slow, thats 30,000 packages mirrored by the average mirror. Even if you state that ‘each package is 1MB on average’, which is not true I would bet, thats still a lot of space occupied on each server. If this is the motivation, I am fine with this, if the motivation is in relation to RMS’s statements, this is appalling to me.
I really don’t see the problem either way though, Red Hat/Fedora is more strict then Debian ever will be… things like MP3 support are in main afaik. To most users, non-free is strictly avoided anyway. Nothing of peticular importance is in non-free other then nvidia drivers.
If they got rid of contrib, I would care much more…
and even if it gets voted,
nobody’s stopping you from setting up a repo with povray, and i’m sure that if and when debian kills non-free, some 3rd party repo (like plf or something) will stand up
Well, having this other repository working is not Debian’s problem. And yes I don’t expect all the tools currentlu available for non-free.
I understand non-free was a necessary service to users 10 years ago. I think it’s not the case anymore. If people want some proprietary software, they can install it themselves, just like they do for not-yet-in-stable software. And we can expect some basic repositories for popular software.
And I don’t see a replication of effort there from a Debian point of view: non-free is not in Debian, so it’s just dropped.
GNU is not the motivation, since Debian is expected to exclude a lot of GNU documentation in sarge+1 (GFDL is not DFSG-free).
Plenty of usable “free” packages left. It’s a craft to put them together and build a fine OS like Debian.
If prboom game is dropped from debian because the shareware wad-file needed by the game is in non-free, then this sucks! FreeBSD seems to have no problems with providing shareware wad-files for such ported games as prboom, wolf3d, heretic, or uhexen.
What I concerns is a cleaner, and more up-to-date debian. I expect this to happen whatever it takes. Slackware does not even include pam, or ldap in its official release. I never heard any words on that. How come you want debian to support everything?
“It’s pity that that kind of extreme positions are taken. Great free applications like povray will be excluded from the official Debian stable and all derived applications are quite useless, like KPovModeller which depend on the povray.”
Yes and why won’t Blender be included? Blender is released under the GPL.
Btw this change just means that the package maintainers do not HAVE to do something anymore regarding non-free (maintain it) it doesn’t mean they won’t DO it; and nobody stops 3rd party. Debian has always been about freedom, so why should maintainers HAVE TO invest time in non-free parts? Makes no sense forcing one to invest time in non-free parts — imo.
“Well, having this other repository working is not Debian’s problem.”
Actually, as it stands, it is. The Social Contract (http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html) says so – they agree to provide Non-Free as a service to their users. More specifically: “we support its use, and we provide infrastructure”.
“I understand non-free was a necessary service to users 10 years ago. I think it’s not the case anymore. If people want some proprietary software, they can install it themselves, just like they do for not-yet-in-stable software.”
Aside from the fact that the Social Contract requires rather more support than such an offhand dismissal, in many cases it’s a matter of need, not want. Many of the things packaged in Non-Free simply have no Free replacements, e.g. the unicorn ADSL driver.
I strongly prefer Free software over Non-Free, but that doesn’t mean I *revile* Non-Free software. I’m a pragmatism, and as such I accept the fact that there are still areas where Non-Free software is required, and there probably will be for the foreseeable future.
“And I don’t see a replication of effort there from a Debian point of view: non-free is not in Debian, so it’s just dropped.”
If Non-Free moves to an external repository, whoever runs it will be providing both the packages and their supporting infrastructure as a service to those Debian users who need those Non-Free packages, just as Debian itself does now. However:
Whereas Non-Free currently resides on the same infrastructure as that of the rest of the project, the external repository will require its own machines, administrators, web site, BTS, mailing lists, source of funding… If you cannot see how this is a duplication of effort, you are stupid.
“And we can expect some basic repositories for popular software.”
As opposed to the what we have right now? No, thanks. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, I prefer to put my faith in infrastructure that already exists rather than that which you claim will materialise out of thin air at some future date.
“why should maintainers HAVE TO invest time in non-free parts”
Huh? This is bogus, because they don’t have to anyway.
Each package in Non-Free is maintained on a volunteer basis at the maintainer’s discretion, exactly the same as for packages in main.
If you were clutching at straws, you could just about make the argument that the ftpmasters, listmasters, web site admins and bts admins are “forced” in some small degree to indirectly support Non-Free, but I think this is rather tenuous to say the least.
> I strongly prefer Free software over Non-Free, but that
> doesn’t mean I *revile* Non-Free software. I’m a
> pragmatism, and as such I accept the fact that there are
> still areas where Non-Free software is required, and
> there probably will be for the foreseeable future.
Hear ye, hear ye.
If only more people would finally realize that, for the vast majority of people, comupters and their software are a means to an end.
go here:
http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002
You can see the counter-argument rationale here:
http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/non_free_amendtment_rationale
Well its all fine and good that the “vast majority” of people consider software to be only a means to an end. The Debian organization, however, is NOT ABOUT SATISFYING THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE! That’s not their goal. Their goal is to provide a high-quality, reliable, and FREE platform. If Debian users want to use non-free software, that’s their prerogative, and there are lots of maintainers out there willing to serve those users. However, that does not fit the goals of Debian as an organization.
The Debian organization, however, is NOT ABOUT SATISFYING THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE! That’s not their goal. Their goal is to provide a high-quality, reliable, and FREE platform.
And that’s why me, and I suspect many others, really don’t like Debian at all. Producing usefull, techincally interesting software earns my respect. Floundering about over what’s come to be a religous matter does not.
This whole discussion is only relevant to me because I’m somewhat forced to use Debian at work. And even then, Debian stable is not useful to me, and neither is debian testing. I’m constantly going to apt-get.org to get things that debian screws up or won’t include for religous reasons.
I’m not a religous man, and I like GPL and Free software evangalists as much as I like those Jahova’s witnesses who used to go door to door harassing people.
But, I guess those of the FSF religion deserve their own distro just as any religion deserves a place of worship. So with that in mind, I’d say go for it. Remove non-free. Those of us who appose should be using more practially motivated software anyways.
“Their goal is to provide a high-quality, reliable, and FREE platform.”
And providing Non-Free has in no way been a barrier to achieving this.
At install time, there’s a question which asks whether or not Non-Free should be added to the sources.list, to which the default answer is “No”. A Debian install is Free software only by default – unless, that is, the user consciously chooses otherwise.
“If Debian users want to use non-free software, that’s their prerogative”
It certainly is. See above.
You’re insulting two groups when you make such a brain dead anology. The Religious and the Idealistic.
“I guess those of the FSF religion deserve their own distro just as any religion deserves a place of worship.”
Troll.
1) Debian has already rejected the GNU Free Documentation License as being Non-Free (http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html).
2) Debian’s definition (well, guidelines) of Free Software (http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html) is not the same as that of the FSF (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) although there is a fair amount of overlap.
Shareware and Commercial Software can support themselves and will just have to get hip and make it easy enough to merge at the end user level instead of the distro level. Draw the line, let the chips fall where they may. The distinction must be made.
@Syntaxis
Yes, I realize this. I suppose I should have said the Debian-free religion. Debian and the FSF are very closly aligned in any case
@Anonymous
How is it a brain dead analogy? The Free software movement is based on many unsubstantiated facts as well as a system of *morals*. Religions typically attempt to enforce their system of morals on others by using things such as “the fear of god”. The Free software movement enforces their morals by the use of the GPL. This is why many die hard Free software supporters don’t like the BSD license, it does not enforce Free software morals like the GPL.
Idealistic is something far different. For instance, ideally we would have no software bugs due to rigorous testing. This is not possible of course, hence it is being idealistic. Notice that there are no morals involved, and no viable counter theories. Certainly no one *wants* bugs in software.
I suppose the Free software movement is closer to say the vegan movement. So maybe it is a grey area to call it a religion. But I don’t try to find many vegans trying to ‘convert’ me. I’m sure there are some, but not many. Conversly, it seems an integral part of the Free software movement is to convert people by using unsubstantiated facts about both Free software and proprietary software. This, to me, means that the Free software movement is basically a religion.
Actually, as it stands, it is. The Social Contract (http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html) says so – they agree to provide Non-Free as a service to their users. More specifically: “we support its use, and we provide infrastructure”.
That’s why they are voting to change the social contract. It will not be Debian’s resposibility to have a non-free repository if they change the contract. That’s the point of the article.
Personally I don’t see the problem at all. Debain was always supposed to be about free software. There are plenty of other distros out there if Debian doesn’t suit you needs. Another repository will likely be set up very quickly anyway. Overall I think this will lead to a better Debian because they will have more time to work on and maintain their free packages.
when i see an OSS version of flash player then i’ll believe it. many sites require flash player for their menus if not for their entire content! sure i could jsut not use those sites but sometimes theyare the only options (lke a local movie theatre) and anyway thats just me screwing myself over. until software installers are as nice in linux as they are in windows i think distro support is needed.
It is brain dead because religion has nothing to do w/ a system of morals. It has to do w/ the belief in a deity and the worship of that deity. The moral system that some religions just happen to have is part of the worship of their deity. Consider religions that require human sacrifice. Is that part of a moral system? Also notice who the ten comandments came from and wonder if it really matters what was carved on that stone.
Conversion also has nothing to do w/ religion. A person who thinks they are right will more likely then want to bring others into their line of thinking. Vi vs Emacs anyone?
An idealogical movement is not a religion. Period.
How is it a brain dead analogy? The Free software movement is based on many unsubstantiated facts as well as a system of *morals*. Religions typically attempt to enforce their system of morals on others by using things such as “the fear of god”. The Free software movement enforces their morals by the use of the GPL. This is why many die hard Free software supporters don’t like the BSD license, it does not enforce Free software morals like the GPL
That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard. The GPL has nothing to do with morality, or forcing beliefs upon anyone. The GPL is about cooperation. The only stipulation is that if you don’t cooperate then you cannot benefit from others work. No free software advocate fears the GPL. They just want the GPL to be followed because if it isn’t it doesn’t work. Some people are idealogues in addition to being free software advocates. They just happen to mix the two together sometimes. To call all free software advocates religious is being a little zealous.
What about people who refuse to use the GPL. Are they also religious zealots? Is Bill Gates a religious zealot for not wanting the GPL anywhere near Windows? By your analogy he would be.
Please stop trying to pigeonhole Free Software and its advocates.
BTW What unsubstantiated facts are you refering to when you speak of the GPL?
@Abraxas
I’m not talking about people who just *use* the GPL as a license. Maybe Free software advocate is not the right term for the group I’m talking about. I’m talking about the kind of person who takes everything on the site GNU.org literally. The person who thinks that proprietary software is not just somehow technically worse, but is downright “unmoral”. These people also tend not to like the BSD license, because “it can be made proprietary, and therefore evil”. Although they do dance around that last idea a little bit, because it’s hard to denounce altruism without looking like a complete nut.
I am not talking about people who use the GPL in general, or prefer the GPL if they have a choice. There are many reasons why one might want to use the GPL. Stallman is a good example of the kind of person I am talking about. For Stallman, even giving the user a *choice* to install non “Free” software is wrong. He said as much about Debian’s non-free repository in an interview in fact. People like Stallman are extreme, and if Debian wants to be the distro to please people like this, then it’s not the business of the rest of us.
What unsubstantiated facts are you refering to when you speak of the GPL?
I’m not talking about the GPL, but rather free software in general. I’m sure you’ve heard these ideas before:
* Free software has less bugs because of open review.
* Closed software has more bugs because of no open review.
* Free software has bugs fixed faster.
* Free software has better quality of code (clarity etc) due to being open.
And some of the more twisted ideas:
* Software isn’t usefull unless the code is avaliable.
* Closed source software is easier to infect with viruses.
None of these *facts* have any real evidence. Yyou may find an article or two supporting them, but then you’ll find articles not supporting them as well. Also, they are generalizations, in reality some open source software is good, some is bad. Same for prorietary software. Yet these ideas are given as *fact* by many many people. They are at most hypothesis.
@Anonymous
I figured you’d come up with this. I used the term religion rather than cult because cult tends to have a negative association. In any case, you are dancing around the point, which is that “RMS followers” (everyone happy?) tend to use tactics and have many qualities in common with relgions, minus the diety.
For Stallman, even giving the user a *choice* to install non “Free” software is wrong.
That is incorrect. Having the choice and promoting it as part of the Debian project are two completly different things.
“For Stallman, even giving the user a *choice* to install non “Free” software is wrong.”
That is incorrect. Having the choice and promoting it as part of the Debian project are two completly different things.
Oh and you really have not answered anything that I’ve said so I take it you take it as fact.
“Huh? This is bogus, because they don’t have to anyway.
Each package in Non-Free is maintained on a volunteer basis at the maintainer’s discretion, exactly the same as for packages in main.”
Look — I’m volunteer for an organisation too, and when i do not deliver my service as others expect it i receive criticism for that. This criticism is valid when we claim X or Y and when it was my responsibility to (be it partly) achieve X or Y.
My rational is that when one provides a service, wether gratis or for a fee, people count on one do it “well”, regardless of wether you get paid or not, wether it is voluntary or not. Thus when one does not provide a “good” service, one will receive criticism regarding that sooner or later (wether you see that criticism as valid or not because you’re volunteer is totally out of line imo; what matters is the opinion of most people regarding your service).
This vote is about an explicit notion to state that the above logical assumption is NOT true. That this service does not exist, and that they are not according to the contract obligated (you put that between ” if you still want to, i don’t) to maintain these packages etc. “You’re lucky if it works”.
That’s how i see it.
“I figured you’d come up with this…”
Thats becasue you know how flawed you anology was before you hit submit.
“I used the term religion rather than cult because cult tends to have a negative association. In any case, you are dancing around the point, which is that “RMS followers” (everyone happy?) tend to use tactics and have many qualities in common with relgions, minus the diety.”
There are no religions that are “minus the diety” so I don’t see why you even bring religion up. Why don’t you talk in more reasonable term instead of throwing veiled insults around?
You asked the question “why should [Debian] maintainers HAVE TO invest time in non-free parts”. I responded by explaining how in fact, they don’t have to at all – that those who maintain packages in Non-Free choose to, of their own free will.
“wether you see that criticism as valid or not because you’re volunteer is totally out of line”
No, it’s not. If someone’s volunteered to do something, then anyone arguing that they’ve been “forced” to do that thing (as you just tried to do) is clearly on crack.
“These people also tend not to like the BSD license, because “it can be made proprietary, and therefore evil”.”
The exact opposite is also true; BSD zealots who hate the GPL (and act upon that hate).
“For Stallman, even giving the user a *choice* to install non “Free” software is wrong. He said as much about Debian’s non-free repository in an interview in fact. People like Stallman are extreme, and if Debian wants to be the distro to please people like this, then it’s not the business of the rest of us.”
Debian was once setted up with help from the FSF and has since then only fare away from the FSF here and there. You can notice various similarities, but there are also quite a few differences. Like you say: “there IS a choice regarding non-Free” (according to Debian’s definition of “Free”) and there will still be; it’s just that volunteers aren’t binded by the social contract to ie. maintain their package.
If you don’t like that, i suggest you try to either find a solution for this, prey to whoever this change won’t happen, participate in a discussion with those who may vote, or use something else (ie. STFU).
Honestly, i don’t understand the fuss of this. There’s a ton of non-“Free” (my definition) (GNU/)Linux distributions, BSD’s, and tons more proprietary already. If you don’t like this Debian change, or Debian as what it is now, while the people who do use it tend to like it, then WTF do you think you’re doing here discussing all this when you have TONS of other choices? Leave us alone with our “zealotry” (or whatever you want to call it).
Regarding vegan (which i am too), if you meant the animal activists like ALF i suggest you look futher in the life of a living creature which is also a child of mother earth. If Hitler’s mass murder was wrong, and people oppposed that which later came out was “right”, then why can’t these people who are (vegan) animal activists and oppose AND fight the mass genocide of animals be right too? Is it that one who acts upon what they are convinced about is what you call a “zealot”? Oh my, poor Galileo then!
how does this affect knoppix.
“You asked the question “why should [Debian] maintainers HAVE TO invest time in non-free parts”. I responded by explaining how in fact, they don’t have to at all – that those who maintain packages in Non-Free choose to, of their own free will.
No, it’s not. If someone’s volunteered to do something, then anyone arguing that they’ve been “forced” to do that thing (as you just tried to do) is clearly on crack.”
Haha. At least i don’t go ad hominem huh hun
If you are volunteering for something, then people expect you to do certain things; like things you claim to do in that position. By volunteering, you bind yourself to these things.
[Question: have you ever worked as volunteer for an organisation? Have you ever not done something which was expected you’d do, if so what happened then?]
Now, Debian states X for non-Free while clearly some voices don’t want to state X. They do not want to guarantee that. They do now, so “Debian” has to do it (DUH!).
Wether these non-Free maintainer volunteers do or do not want this isn’t what only matters, what matters is what ALL of those who are involved see it. To see the outcome of what most people want (on 75% “ground-law” rule) there’s a vote.
Dude. That’s a completely wacky argument. You’re missing up all these different groups of people together in hopes of making a point!
I’m talking about the kind of person who takes everything on the site GNU.org literally. The person who thinks that proprietary software is not just somehow technically worse, but is downright “unmoral”.
GNU never calls proprietory software “unmoral.” It calls it “anti-social.” When you make proprietory software, you are not contributing anything to society. That is not an inherently immoral thing, but it is most definitely anti-social.
These people also tend not to like the BSD license, because “it can be made proprietary, and therefore evil”.
Show me where on GNU.org it says that the BSD license is “evil?” This is a strawman argument here…
People like Stallman are extreme, and if Debian wants to be the distro to please people like this, then it’s not the business of the rest of us.
Debian’s position is hardly as extreme as Stallman’s! Debian’s position is “if we’re going to work on it, it should be free for people to use.” That’s a perfectly sensible position. Why should the Debian *community* work on packaging the software of people who do not contribute to that community? Debian is not about making the best distro. It is about making the best *free* distro. If other people want to package proprietory software for their users, they are perfectly free to take Debian’s core system and add to it. Indeed, end-user distros based on Debian like Xandros and Lindows, do precise that!
I’m not talking about the GPL, but rather free software in general. I’m sure you’ve heard these ideas before:
Sure I’ve heard those ideas. But what does that have to do with GNU advocates? The points you are talking about are related to the Open Source movement, not the Free Software movement. Can you point me to where GNU.org says any of those things?
“Debain was always supposed to be about free software.”
I agree that Debian’s primary focus has always been, and still is, Free software. That aside:
If you mean that it’s supposed to be about Free software to the exclusion of all else, then this claim is demonstrably false. The Social Contract was introduced in July 1997 (http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/debian-announce-1997/msg000…) which means that Debian has supported Non-Free for the last six and a half years now (~65% of its lifetime).
Additionally, Step 3 (Philosophy and Procedures) of the New Maintainer process (http://www.debian.org/devel/join/nm-step3) states that “The applicant is expected to agree with the Debian philosophy as expressed in the Social Contract and the Debian Free Software Guidelines.” As such, I would guess that the vast majority of developers who have passed through the NM process will fall more on the “keep Non-Free” side of the fence. Admittedly I’m not sure exactly what percentage of the total developer corpus that is, but it must be a fairly large chunk.
And that’s why me, and I suspect many others, really don’t like Debian at all.
You’re certainly welcome to not like Debian. Taking a stand quite often means that other people will not like you.
Producing usefull, techincally interesting software earns my respect.
Are you claiming that Debian isn’t useful or technically interesting?
Floundering about over what’s come to be a religious matter does not.
You’re confused. Debian is concerned with the belief of freedom. Beliefs are a superset of religion. Calling a concern for freedom a “religious matter” is akin to calling a triangle a square because both are polygons.
I’m constantly going to apt-get.org to get things that debian screws up or won’t include for religous reasons.
Has it ever occurred to you that Debian stable’s goals might just not be commensurate with yours? Debian stable is meant to be *stable*. Its meant for people to run it on mission-critical servers. People do not run mplayer on servers. And when Debian doesn’t include software, it does not do so for religious reasons, but because that software falls outside the scope of Debian’s organization. If your house is on fire, do you call the police or the firemen? If you need proprietory software, don’t call Debian! Its not that they don’t want you to use proprietory software, it is that proprietory software is just not what they do.
I’m not a religous man, and I like GPL and Free software evangalists as much as I like those Jahova’s witnesses who used to go door to door harassing people.
When has a Debian developer come to you preaching the GPL? Or do you go bugging Jehova’s Witnesses about what they do in Church?
Those of us who appose should be using more practially motivated software anyways.
It is dangerous to barter freedom for convenience. There is certainly a place for those who wish to do so (hey, I use lots of proprietory software myself) but Debian isn’t that place. However, that doesn’t mean that Debian can’t make your life better anyway. Why not use one of the numerous Debian-based distros, which add proprietory packages to the free Debian system?
Syntaxis? Do you run Debian?
Do you even run Linux? Because I have debated you here countless times in which you demonize the GPL and free software.
If you do neither of the above, why the fuck do you care as to what the Debian project does?
Zealot this, religious that…
Your posts and many others are so charged in their language that they cannot be taken at face value. What is your agenda and why do you not have the courage to be upfront about it like RMS does?
He wants people to be able to share software with the only restriction being that you give back if you take from the pool.
What is your agenda?
This could alter the landscape far more for Debian, from their weekly newsletter:
“A recent change in the upstream man-pages project was detected. As of version 1.65 manual pages from the POSIX standard are included in the upstream man-pages distribution. Their copyright, however, doesn’t talk about distribution and modification, but the latter is explicitly not permitted, according to the upstream maintainer. Since this would render the entire package non-free, its packaging has changed slightly so that non-free parts are stripped off in time.”
eekk!
CB
My prior post was directed at A.K.H. I somehow got the names mixed-up.
This place should have a proper threaded forum.
“Do you run Debian?”
Yes. I’m typing this from my Debian Unstable system right now.
“Do you even run Linux? Because I have debated you here countless times in which you demonize the GPL and free software.”
@A.K.H.: Now *that’s* ad hominem! 😛
@EU: I think you’re misrepresenting me here, to say the least. Also, how about addressing the points I’ve made in this thread rather than muddying the waters with baseless slurs upon my character?
“why the fuck do you care as to what the Debian project does?”
Because I’m interested. Why should I have to justify myself to you? I have just as much right to express an opinion as anybody else. Feel free to engage me in debate if you have something constructive to add to the discussion, but please keep a civil tongue about your person.
“What is your agenda and why do you not have the courage to be upfront about it like RMS does?”
My agenda? I don’t speak for anybody except myself. My only purpose here is the same as always, to debate the subject at hand with whoever else is interested. As for not being upfront, I think I’ve made it clear from the start that I’m against dropping support for Non-Free, and I’ve also tried to explain my reasoning.
“My prior post was directed at A.K.H. I somehow got the names mixed-up.”
Lol – thank goodness for that. 😀
In that case, please ignore my response.
That post was not directed at you.
Debian, The Free Software Foundation and the GPL are so completely entertwined as to be indistigishable from each other. To me, it IS hypocritical to be the de facto standard distribution for free software, to offer non-free software in the distribution. Is it enough for me to get my panties in a wad over the fact that they currently do? Hardly. Nor is it enough to get up in arms if Debian decides to drop support for Non-Free. Who cares? If Non-free is dropped, you simply go to apt-get.org, find the non-free packages you want, add the sources for those packages to your sources list and apt-get update & apt-get install wtfever. It’s not even worth piddling or arguing over. This is the same reason freshrpms exist, to provide tools that are not found in Redhat/Fedora standard distribution. But I suppose Redhat/Fedora are zealots too, for the things not included in their standard distribution. Or perhaps its just more fun to pick on Debian and the GPL?
@Eu
Do you even run Linux? Because I have debated you here countless times in which you demonize the GPL and free software.
I do run linux at work, and I use FreeBSD extensivly for personal uses. And I might come across as demonizing the GPL, and free software, but in actual fact I’m trying to get people to simply talk about things the way they are. It may surprise you, but I’ve actually *released* GPL software, and also contributed to GPL software. And in the future I plan on releasing some BSD software too (as soon as it’s finished).
And as for debian, I use that at work, which is why this is relevant to me. By making non-free disappear, it will probably make my life that much harder. Of course, I already use apt-get.org a lot, so if you notice, I actually supported them removing non-free. As I said, it’s their right and their project.
What is your agenda?
To counter all those people going on about how *evil* proprietary software is and how technically superior free software is. Proprietary software is not *evil* or wrong, maybe not altruistic, but then neither is a lot of what we do in life. Also, there is little to no evidence either way as to wether free software is techincally better or worse than proprietary software. It doesn’t help free software any to have people go around spewing hypothesis as fact.
@Raynier
I was trying to fight on too many fronts, and not being clear, hence the result of sounding like a moron.
Anyways, your right, I just checked, the FSF don’t call BSD software immoral, but they do call it “Being weak” http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.html. And this kind of attitute is offensive to me. I see it as being altruistic not weak. Thanks for clarify that though.
Why should the Debian *community* work on packaging the software of people who do not contribute to that community?
Because maybe that software is really usefull for it’s users and debian wants to make the most usefull distribution? Anyways, I already said that Debian should do what they want. If I had a choice I’d would use another distribution.
Are you claiming that Debian isn’t useful or technically interesting?
Well, it certianly could be *more* useful, ie, if it had a shorter release cycle. And no, I don’t find it that technically interesting. I find things like HURD, OS X, and DragonflyBSD to be interesting (although HURD has licensing issues and is hopelessly far away from ever coming out).
You’re confused. Debian is concerned with the belief of freedom. Beliefs are a superset of religion.
Yes, sorry, religion was the wrong word to use. I was more thinking about a specific subset of FSF advocates who very closely resemble a cult when talking about relegion anyways. That said, I don’t share Debian’s beleifs. Or rather, I *am* concered with freedom, but not in the same way as Debian.
I don’t believe shunning non-free software completely is really helping free software any. Making your distribution harder to use in practice is no way to convice people that free software is usefull and good. And I thought that was part of the Debians goal?
Debian stable is meant to be *stable*. Its meant for people to run it on mission-critical servers. I know, but I use if for a desktop, which it doesn’t seem that well suited for (mind you, tons of Debian people try to convince me it is, including the people who want me running it at work).
It is dangerous to barter freedom for convenience.
Sure, but not in all cases. Things like the nvidia drivers are not threating my freedom any. Also, they are really needed for desktop systems running nvidia boards. Granted Debian might not focus on the desktop so it may not matter, but still, sometimes including some non-free things is very useful. It’s all a trade off.
Why not use one of the numerous Debian-based distros, which add proprietory packages to the free Debian system?
I would, but the administrators at my work want to run debian, and I’m willing to inconvenience myself to make their lives somewhat easier. This is also the reason why I think that Debian probably should not support non-free. It’s not a distribution I agree with and not supporting non-free really seems in line with the Debian way of thinking.
When has a Debian developer come to you preaching the GPL? I don’t know any Debian developers, but I have had many debian users preach to me about free software and why I should use it and why I should use Debian in particular and not BSD.
That is incorrect. Having the choice and promoting it as part of the Debian project are two completly different things.
Not really, having non-free software avaliable is not *promoting* it, but rather just makes Debian more user freindly.
Oh and you really have not answered anything that I’ve said so I take it you take it as fact.
What have I not answered? I said, you are right and religion is not the right word, cult is. That word sounds harsh, but it’s technically more correct for how many free software evangalists act. Just because they are promoting a nice idea, free software, doesn’t make it right to use cult like tactics.
This is really side tracked anyways, and I’m beginning to think it’s pointless to try and argue against things. Probably the best thing to do is to not read most comments or comment on them. It seems I’m not adding constructively here anyways.
I’ll stick to technical things from now on.
Not necessarily happening
By Anonymous (IP: —.wlawla.wa.charter.com) – Posted on 2004-02-25 06:29:47
This article jumped the gun a bit. It doesn’t even seem clear that the vote will happen. Appears the motion is 3.5 years old.
I read that and had to burst out laughing, 3 and 1/2 years old rofl.. Boy things sure do move fast in debian.. (im a long time debian user, debian unstable for me desktop and stable for server(s) ) but some things are just disorganised and other things just have a bit too much politics. But over all the system works.
Well it is in stable (via kde themselves) not in unstable yet funny how that works.. but pre packages are available here
http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianKDE
Note: As of 2004-02-19, the correct line seems to be
deb http://people.debian.org/~ccheney/kde-3.2.0/ ./
deb http://people.debian.org/~bab/kde-3.2 ./
if anyones interested
“Oh and you really have not answered anything that I’ve said so I take it you take it as fact.”
That was incorect of me.. I missed a whole part of your post. The comments I made later reflect my mistake.
“Actually, as it stands, it is. The Social Contract (…) says so -”
This was true 10 years ago, it should be changed today. There’s no point in wasting time and resources maintaining useless software.
We never have problems. Some of these computers even run Unstable. In fact a lot on Debian-based distributions use that same Testing pool. On my main home computer i also run Debian GNU/Linux Unstable and the only real problem i had was with glibc. That’s 1 in ~4 – 5 years. Don’t want to take the risk? Go for Stable or Testing.
“This was true 10 years ago”
No, it wasn’t. The Social Contract was adopted on the 4th of July, 1997. Please do some research rather than just pulling some arbitrary, concocted date out of your behind.
“There’s no point in wasting time and resources maintaining useless software.”
As has already been pointed out, much of the software in Non-Free is far from useless: it provides functionality superior to that of its Free equivalents, if indeed such Free equivalents exist at all.
“A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.”
I’m not posting to this thread after this because the subject has been lost.
“As has already been pointed out, much of the software in Non-Free is far from useless: it provides functionality superior to that of its Free equivalents, if indeed such Free equivalents exist at all.”
If that has been pointed out at all, it certainly has not been proven.
“2. Company; herd; breed.
For do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of
youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds.”
Or maybe because you are clearly wrong?
“If that has been pointed out at all, it certainly has not been proven.”
How about the unicorn ADSL driver (http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/unicorn) or the Adobe Japanese CMAP fonts (http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/cmap-adobe-japan1)?
Besides, the onus of proof should lie in the opposite direction. dk advocates dropping Non-Free, which would mean a major change to the status quo. The ones who propose change must provide a rationale for doing so if they wish to convince anyone that it’s worthwhile.
Thus, if he truly believes that all the software in Non-Free is useless and thus should be dropped, it is up to him to prove it, not up to others to disprove his erroneous assertion.
I can’t help myself….
This is very fine poetry, but it is not from a dictionary. I have a lot of respect for our animal brothers, but I accept that some animals eat others as part of the natural order. I am an animal also. They are a gift from the Great Spirit as I too will one day be a gift to another organism.
“No, it wasn’t. The Social Contract was adopted on the 4th of July, 1997. Please do some research rather than just pulling some arbitrary, concocted date out of your behind. ”
I said proprietary software had to be supported, 10 years ago, and that’s what I meant. Obviously you misread something. Why would the Social Contract consider things differently, only a few years later ?
“As has already been pointed out, much of the software in Non-Free is far from useless: it provides functionality superior to that of its Free equivalents, if indeed such Free equivalents exist at all.”
The “superior” proprietary software used to be numerous in the past. It’s not the case anymore. If a few of them are useful, just install them, but they do not deserve a section, time and resources anymore.
YES it IS…
4: (biology) a taxonomic group that is a division of a species; usually arises as a consequence of geographical isolation within a species [syn: subspecies]
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=race
And that quote I made before was from Webster’s.
Their online Dictionary has a very similar definition:
1 : a breeding stock of animals
2 a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock b : a class or kind of people unified by community of interests, habits, or characteristics <the English race>
3 a : an actually or potentially interbreeding group within a species; also : a taxonomic category (as a subspecies) representing such a group b : BREED