Re: Debian Weekly News - June 27th, 2000
On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> Consider this: any reasonable person who wants to become
> a Debian developer, can become a Debian developer. Once a developer,
> they can contribute to the official .deb repository.
>
Consider this: any reasonable person who would like to package
non-free software for Debian simply *can't* because we don't allow him
to do so even for Debian non-free. KDE is an example for which other
distributions are less prohibitive.
Yes, i know about the legal problems regarding KDE, but Debian should
IMHO be not the legal guardian for other people's right if they don't
bother to stand up for it. The parties which have been harmed by
breaking their rights should.
> It is doubtful that you would want to install a .deb from someone
> rejected by our non-maintainer process anyway.
>
If it fills a gap not solvable with Debian proper i definitely would.
Just like i did with some assorted KDE packages not available via the
official Debian sites. Or the recent OpenMotif release...
> Hence, there is simply no need for such a repository.
>
IMHO you got it completely backwards. The perspective under which the
idea of such a kind of repository arose is probably product of the
licensing restrictions which make Debian less attractive and useful
than it could actually be for quite a number of *users*. Users have a
different perspective than you have and *want* some of the stuff which
is not allowed into Debian. The creation of such a repository is
their way to react against the obvious censoring of software included
with Debian.
Since there are quite some users who simply happily use Debian for
it's technological merits/benefits and who don't mind using non-free
software they'd be happy to have a repository where they can fetch for
their Debian setup what users of other distributions can get far
easier than Debian users.
KDE is just one example of evidently *very* popular and excellent
software which would be a perfect candidate for such a repository.
Users are far less anal about restricted licenses than Debian and as
it looks like some of them are fed up with Debian's pedantries.
Yes, they could choose one of the other distributions who are more
appropriate for their needs like Redhat or SuSE et. al. who are not as
pedantic about proper licensing than we are, but why would a happy
Debian user want to abandon the exquisite Debian system just for a few
packages if they can be had from some other source?
Cheers, P. *8^)
PS: Yes, i use non-free software too and don't mind using it as long
as there is no free equivalent. And even if there is a free
equivalent i'd use the non-free one if it would be superior. Yes,
instead of holding my breath until a free version appears i'd
rather prefer to get my work done. Yes, i love free software but
accept that there *is* and there *should* be a place for non-free
software in the real world. No, i don't believe in a Free
Software Utopia, but only in Free Software alongside Non-Free
Software. Utopias are bound to turn too easily into tyranny.
--
------------ Paul Seelig <pseelig@mail.uni-mainz.de> -------------
African Music Archive - Institute for Ethnology and Africa Studies
Johannes Gutenberg-University - Forum 6 - 55099 Mainz/Germany
------------------- http://ntama.uni-mainz.de --------------------
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