On Tue, May 04, 1999 at 10:53:14PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Imagine when a group of people say "Hey, call us using
> foo-grubble, and we can have a neat game". And we have to say, sorry,
> no can do, I use linux, and I am unable to do that.
Not exactly. You'd have to say "Sorry, no can do, I don't like having
anything to do with non-free software, at all, so I refuse to be a part
of that."
After all, by installing something from contrib, you haven't suddenly
turned your machine into a Windows 95 box, or anything. You're still
running Debian GNU/Linux, you've just installed some extra stuff that
depends on non-free software for its functionality.
If I may quote from the social contract:
] 1. Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software
]
] We promise to keep the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free
] software. As there are many definitions of free software, we include
] the guidelines we use to determine if software is "free" below.
In other words: main is free software. Software that's GPLed, or BSDed,
or QPLed, or whatever. In particular, we won't suddenly stick Qt1 on your
system, no matter how cool it is. We'll wait for Qt2 or gtk or something
that's free to come along, even if it makes your system less functional.
But for things like TiK, hell, they're free software! Why not put 'em on?
] We will
] support our users who develop and run non-free software on Debian, but
] we will never make the system depend on an item of non-free software.
And here's the issue under discussion: TiK depends on an item of non-free
software for its functionality. It doesn't depend on it as heavily as KDE
used to (does, whatever), but, in at least some sense, it still *needs*
non-free software to be useful.
Which means some part fo the system depends on an item of non-free
software.
*shrug*
I must admit I don't really care about this. We're not stopping anyone
from doing anything -- TiK can still be packaged, still mirrored, still
distributed by CD, you name it. We're not saying that we can't or won't
distribute it, we're not even saying that it's bad, all we're saying is
that you can't use it without non-free software.
And yes, I realise there's a distinction between "without non-free
software running on some other machine" and "without non-free software
running on *your* machine". I don't see it as being a particularly
crucial distinction, though.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.
``Smart, sexy, single. Pick any two (you can't have all three).''
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