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Debian Can Now Amend Social Contract, DFSG 280
An anonymous reader writes "The Debian Project, creators of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, has voted to allow amendments to their Social Contract and Free Software Guidelines, as long as the developers agree with a 3:1 majority. The full text of the various amendments can be found in the original call for votes. Debian developer and XFree86 packager Branden Robinson has already proposed an amendment to the Social Contract that removes the requirement to maintain an archive for non-free software or "contrib" software (free software that depends on non-free software to work). Debian could still maintain this archive, but would no longer be required to do so. The proposal also updates the Social Contract to clearly require all works in Debian to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines, not just software, which had come up repeatedly in the discussions over the non-free "GNU Free Documentation Licence". Both of these updates have been under consideration for some time, but were waiting on the ratification of the amendment procedure. The Debian Project voted on this amendment using their modified Condorcet voting procedure, which allows voters to rank the choices in order of preference, eliminating the "lesser of two evils" effect common to simple majority voting."
This is good news (Score:2, Insightful)
What's really interesting here is that this moves them a little closer to the way the Gentoo people operate. Take a look at Their Social Contract [gentoo.org] for comparison purposes.
Um.... what? (Score:5, Informative)
No. No, not at all. In fact it moves them farther away from Gentoo. In Gentoo's Social Contract, there is nothing explicitly stated about Documentation, but rather refers explicitly to software as binaries or sources. Debian has been working on productive discussions with the FSF over the GFDL for over two years, and this change is a direct result from those discussions. Most Debian Developers feel that documentation qualifies as software, and should be included under the DFSG as well.
Everything in Gentoo's Social contract is basically directly lifted from Debian's, although they decided not to take it all. The Gentoo people don't operate on nearly the same strict standards of Freedom that Debian does, and the differences in the Social Contracts, including the latest change, demonstrates that. If the Gentoo people decide to move in this direction too, it'll be because of more than two years of hard wrangling on debian-legal.
Re:Um.... what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruce
Re:Um.... what? (Score:2)
Who is the Debian "User"? (Score:2)
Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environment. We won't object to commercial software that is intended to
Re:Who is the Debian "User"? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO this mission lies with the Debian derivative rather than with Debian. Like Libranet and Knoppix, for example.
Bruce
Re:Debian's obligation to end users (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who is the Debian "User"? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Disclaimer: I am a hardware engineer, and don't really mess much with the innards of software. I just want an OS that is clean and works.)
The Xandros distribution was and is very appealing to me because of its ease of use and installation (like Lindows), but i
Re:Who is the Debian "User"? (Score:2)
Like democracy, debian is advanced citizenship. You get what you give. Most user communities are not allowed this oppertunity. The social contract sets in stone that
Re:This is good news (Score:2)
Heh... (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if this scratches a subconscious need that was previously fulfilled by the complex gameplay of DnD and RPGs that many geeks did as kids?
I don't want politics, i want software!
(all in jest, of course)
Seriously... (Score:2, Informative)
Bruce
Re:Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lot of noise going on as of late regarding GPL vs. SCO, GPL vs. BSD-license, copylefts, copyrights, patents, etc...
I'll admit that i'm ignorant to a lot of this, maybe blissfully so. Though i can read a lot of posts and reactions of people in debates (i see mainly BSD vs. GPL license wars here and on Usenet, usually from both sides since i use both FreeBSD and Debian) and see that a lot of other people might be as half-cocked clueless as me, i feel like i *should* know and understand it all.
It nags at me, i feel obligated to pursue it, but damn.... I just can't keep myself interested in licensing and stuff long enough to get anywhere.
Am i wrong? Or is it best to be left to those with the abilities for this thing?
Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have some simple rules for licensing that you can use if you don't want to get in too deep. First, make sure that the copyright holders (that's you and anyone else who contribute) own what they are contributing. They can't have cut and pasted from elsewhere, they have to have written the code.
Then, use the GPL for stuff you do on your free time, and use the BSD license for stuff that someone else pays you for if they don't like the GPL.
The GPL is sharing with rules, the BSD license is a gift with almost no requirements upon the folks who get the code. It makes sense that if you do the work on your own time, people who modify the work should give you the same rights on their changes that you gave them on the original code - and the GPL requires that. But if you get paid to do the code, BSD is fine - because it's not a gift as far as you are concerned.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Seriously... (Score:2)
For your work in Debian, your wisdom and levelheadedness in dealing with SCO, and finally for taking the time to answer my post in a kind and useful way. I am humbled by your example.
Re:Seriously... (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone doesn't like it, then can always pay me to give them a GPL licensed copy of my stuff...
Re:Seriously... (Score:2)
What are all these licenses? [newtolinux.org.uk] (as part of a series of informative articles to accompany 'technical' tutorials)
Re:Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seriously... (Score:2, Insightful)
To make your jest serious: This is the trail that Richard Stallman proceeded down in about 1984. He wanted good software, and felt that the complications of copyright (and the business model that usually came along with copyright) made good software so much more difficult to produce.
Kinda ironic how much time and effort that should be going toward writing software is now consumed by the game of armchair copyright lawyer.
I want good software, and am sick and tired of having to pass on the right soluti
Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Bruce
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't a script whose only fuction is to point apt to non-free repositories, hence facilitating the installation of non-free software, preclude Debian from being "100% Free Software?" Is the script any more "free" than free packages that depend on non-free software to run?
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:2)
If you have a problem with it being a script to allow access to non-free packages, write one that will add any apt source to the list, instead of just one for non-free.
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:5, Interesting)
Some time before non-free disappears from Debian's mirrors, we'd make some base package require a package containing an installation script that looks to see if the user is presently using the non-free repository. So, everyone who runs an upgrade would get this package, and it's script would run. If the user is using the non-free repository, the user gets a note that it's moving, and is asked if he'd like to reset his apt choices to the new location of non-free or to do without non-free from then on, in which case we'd present the list of packages that would be lost from the system.
Debian isn't about taking choice s away from people. But that doesn't mean that Debian can't make it's own choices and ask people to find what they want elsewhere.
Bruce
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:2)
Sounds like a good use for the VRMS [debian.org] package.
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think I really understood the possibilites until I discovered apt-get.org. It's a great concept, that you can "tune in" to the types of software that you want/need, and it doesn't all necessarily have to come from the official Debian servers.
This might give Debian users more choices, actually.
On a totally unrelated topic... (Score:2)
How is it actually managed?
I had this crazy idea that goes something like this:
When you first install debian, you do it from a safe source (let's say a CD like OpenBSD or a mirror you _really_ trust). All the packages come with the public key of the maintainer and all package are signed by the package maintainer.
Therefore, if someone roots a mirror and change a packa
Re:On a totally unrelated topic... (Score:2)
I had this crazy idea that goes something like this:
Not crazy; in progress. The debian-keyring package contains all the maintainers' public keys, packages are already signed, and I believe dpkg has already been modified to have the ability to verify the signatures. The whole thing will be turned on Real Soon Now; I think it's supposed to be in place for the release of Sarge.
Therefore, if someone roots a mirror and change a package you'll get a message like SSH would give: the key for package "bla"
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare it to the current situtation, where the same maintainers use the same keyring and the same servers and the same development boxes and the same mailing lists and the same archive maintenance facilities and the same build daemo
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:2)
Yes. The script performs a function and allows others to modify that functionality and redistribute their modifications. It requires no non-free software, and can run on a 100% DFSG-compliant system. The other cannot run without non-free software, period.
If the program is DFSG-compliant, and requires no DFSG-compliant software to function, it belongs in main.
If the program is DFSG-complaint, and cannot run without n
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:3, Interesting)
Bruce
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:2)
Well, of course that's been happening for years. The fact that non-free is a little farther away will only make it easier.
Bruce
We've been doing that for ages. (Score:2)
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:2)
I don't think it's a good idea for Debian to totally divest itself of non-free software. The fact remains that non-free software is useful for large numbers of people.
It wouldn't be a big deal. Right now there are several repositories that host .debs of packages that Debian won't carry, even in the non-free tree. Things like MP3 encoders that have potential patent restrictions, or libdvdcss, which may violate provisions of the DMCA.
Most users of Debian want to use those other packages, so they just a
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:politics (Score:5, Insightful)
And then once the software is in the hands of the distro makers, they have to package it properly. Now, believe it or not, but packaging something well is tough. It's like programming, so you have to shake the bugs out of that too over time.
I guess it comes down to a different definition of stable. If you think all software is stable right out of the gate because it runs, then you've got a different definition of stable than most Debian developers. If you want that stuff, there's a version of Debian you can track: it's called unstable (and you can even sprinkle in experimental, if you really have the faith).
I really don't understand the general Linux user's need to get the latest and greatest at all times. Most of us ran windows for years, and simply waited for Microsoft to say "Ok, it's ready, here you go" every two or more years before upgrading. Debian's release schedule isn't a whole lot different, but you can simply see what's going on behind the scenes, so people tend to get impatient. How quickly we forget.
Re:politics (Score:5, Informative)
Odds are you'll get flamed by a handful of Debian fanboys and applauded by a handful of Debian haters. I fit squarely in the "Debian fanboy" category, but I'm going to try to stay away from flaming.
Debian's distribution system has three tiers: stable, testing, and unstable. The stable release is the one you complained about having "way too old" packages, which is fully legitimate -- Debian's stable packages are old. The theory is to maintain a consistent, fully-supported system that is Really Stable, while maintaining the ability to provide security updates when necessary. This is especially useful on production servers, where it's a Bad Idea to change *anything* without contemplating it first. It works well for systems that shouldn't need coddling to maintain; if I were building a Debian system for my mother I'd use stable.
Obviously, stable won't work for everyone. For those who like the bleeding edge, there's unstable, which contains the Latest and Greatest Software (much of it prerelease; all of it updated frequently). Unstable might break everything, but when it works, you get Mozilla 1.5 without having to think about it and everything New and Improved!
And then there's testing, which contains all of the New and Improved! packages from unstable after they've had a few weeks to sit and haven't had any bug reports filed against them. Testing is good for those who don't feel compelled to live on the edge but don't want to live in 2001, either.
Debian isn't for everyone, but that's why Linux is free software -- "free" as in "freedom".
Re:politics (Score:2)
scripsit Jaeger:
I probably deserve the label of `Debian fanboy' (I won't run nothing else...) but even I'm getting a bit tired of Mozilla 1.0. Testing still has 2:1.0.0-0.woody.1. And it's not apparently getting into Testing any time soon, because it can't build on ARM...
Re:politics (Score:2)
scripsit MystikPhish:
I actually normally use Galeon, but its upgrade has been blocked for a long time by Moz's being frozen at 1.0... I'll check out Firebird. I assumed (wrongly apparently) that it depended on an up-to-date Moz like Galeon does...
Re:politics (Score:2)
scripsit Crazy Eight:
I have done this for a variety of packages (running some from woody/updates for security reasons and some from sid), but last time I tried this for Moz there were a lot of deps that couldn't be satisfied on a Sarge box. My desktops need to be available as close to 100% as possible, so I don't mess with Sid...
Re:politics (Score:2)
Re:politics (Score:2)
My experience has been that ports only help to isolate bugs that might have been more subtle on the i386 architecture and more difficult to find, but would still be there.
Bruce
Re:politics (Score:3, Informative)
I'm the guy who put these policies in writing for Debian. I had the job of building the distribution, and these polici
Re: (Score:2)
Re:politics (Score:2)
But over time, if you give it a decade or so, you will be better off having starting those seeds with software the preserves the freedoms that allow t
Re:politics (Score:2)
/joeyo
Re:politics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:politics (Score:2)
Most of the Debian developers would probably read your sig and decide that it's the best possible answer they can find to your criticism.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:politics (Score:2)
By adhering to clearly defined licensing guidelines, Debian avoids much of the difficulty that preparers of comercial software must deal with. The developers and maintainers can concentrate on providing good, well packaged software, without worrying about contract obligations, delivery dates, or complex licensing concerns.
If the age
This is good news, Thanks Bruce (Score:2)
Is it possible that when Debian restructures the official hierarchy that it shows a PNG Graphic(assuming one isn't using Lynx) of the hierarchy so that when people get to the graphic they get an immediate visual layout of how Debian is organized? From there you can have Key that references apt sources to add to one's own list for specific non-free software providers of debs.
The image could be updated periodically reflecting the structure and source listings.
It would make for using Go
Re:This is good news, Thanks Bruce (Score:2)
Bruce
Well, but... (Score:2)
good news for voting too (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that we have a well-defined best known way to vote, perhaps we can get governments to adopt it for city, state, even national elections. I very much want the US to become more democratic.
Re:good news for voting too [OFF-TOPIC] (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want the US to be less plutocratic, I think you need some changes in the media. People vote according to what they are presented with in the news, and the news here is produced for ratings, rather than as a means of cultivating an educated voter. The Internet was supposed to fix that simply by providing more variety in news programming, but it has not, so far, done so.
My current idea would be to require of broadcasters, in exchange for their access to spectrum, that they h
Re:good news for voting too (Score:3, Insightful)
Condorcet doesn't always make the most people the happiest, but it's nicely impervious to several things that can go wrong with elections.
Re:good news for voting too (Score:2)
Re:good news for voting too (Score:2)
Which Constitution do you mean? We changed the Debian one yesterday :) If you mean the U.S. Constitution, it's been amended twenty-seven times already. Once more won't hurt.
Oh, that reminds me. Some people have complained about Debian being too slow and bureaucratic. Just LOOK at that twenty-seventh amendment:
Now THAT's slow.
Re:good news for voting too (Score:2)
This is good for Debian! (Score:5, Informative)
Out of all the distros out there I personally like debian the best, and this is another reason why. With all the alternatives available to the open source community you have to hand it to Debian for allowing users easy freedom of choice. If you want only free software then don't add contrib or non-free to your sources.list. If you want stability and security on your computer, use woody. If you want new software and don't care if it meets free software definitions, use sid with contrib and non-free.
I have several computers all running debian and each have different setups depending upon what I'm using it for. Debian makes this very easy to do and IMHO, along with apt, is what makes debian better than the other distros. Ultimately this leads to a better separation of choice and still allows anyone to easily configure debian whatever way they want.
-Pat
Debian needs to get over it. (Score:2, Insightful)
However...
having packages for non-free stuff is good, and NECESSARY, as well. Yes, anyone can make them.. but it really helps having a central repository. IN the real business world, you can only take the need for freedom so far. I love Debian servers, but at some point there is non-free stuff I *need* to run.
Further... I'm sure everyone has said it before, but Debian really NEEDS to get it's st
Re:Debian needs to get over it. (Score:2)
Well, apt-get.org has been acting as a good central routing point for unofficial packages for quite a while, and it works well. One thing that any business can do is use apt-get.org to find non-free stuff, an
not likely to see many changes then, are we? (Score:2)
well, if they have to have three times as many developers as they have, we're not likely to see very many changes made, are we?
unless some people are more equal than others...
(yes, i'm kidding)
Anybody wondering... (Score:4, Informative)
"Condorcet's method is one of several pairwise methods, which are great methods for electing people in single-seat elections (president, governor, mayor, etc.). Condorcet's method is named after the 18th century election theorist who invented it. Unlike most methods which make you choose the lesser of two evils, Condorcet's method and other pairwise methods let you rank the candidates in the order in which you would see them elected. The way the votes are tallied is by computing the results of separate pairwise elections between all of the candidates, and the winner is the one that wins a majority in all of the pairwise elections.
The best result of this is that if there is Candidate A on one extreme who pulls 40% of the vote, Candidate B in the middle who only pulls 20% of the vote, and Candidate C on the other extreme who pulls 40% of the vote, Candidate B will get elected as a compromise. Why? Because in a two-way contest between A and B, B would win with 60% of the vote, and in a two-way contest between B and C, B would also win with 60% of the vote. (Note that if B is a looney billionaire, he might not be able to win separate pairwise elections against anyone, and this would be reflected with Condorcet's method.)
Condorcet's method lets voters mark their sincere wishes for who they would like to win the election, without having to consider strategy ("I'd vote for Candidate B, but I'm afraid of wasting my vote."). It's really just a logical extension of majority rule when more than two choices are involved."
= 9J =
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:3, Funny)
[SNL] "Tommy, dude, tell me you got that on tape!" [/SNL] =P
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What you mean to say is that you have grown tired of these ideals.
Personally, I still feel as strongly about the FS ideals as when I first read GNU's philosophy documents [gnu.org]. If they didn't stick to these ideals, the whole fabric of the FS community would disintegrate.
I wonder how you can grow tired of them though, especially if you have woody installed. Do you not see that woody is a direct result of these ideals, that facilitate the development of a system that provides such freedoms, not only in the liberal sense, but also in terms of providing new opportunities to those who, in the 'real' world suffer inequal opportunities. If it weren't for the availability of a completely free system based upon open standards that is guaranteed to remain Free, the only way to ensure that digital media remain accessible would be to constantly legislate to make people use open formats, and of course every day we see why FS people are so right when companies implement more proprietary schemes that deny access.
A firm committment to FS ideals, and a management structure carefully scrutinised by a collection of computer scientists, philosophers, psychologists and whoever else looks after Debian is absolutely the best thing a distribution community could hope for.
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:2)
I'm not opposed to the freedom to run only free-as-in-speech software --- I never said that. I am opposed to anyone looking down on me because I run non-Debian distro (SuSE has been my main distro for 4 years now, though I also like NetBSD). I'm not saying every Debian us
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:2)
I think you're conflating different kinds of people in your second post. There are those who will persistently pester you for saying "Linux" not "GNU/Linux", who will look down on you for not using a 100% Free distribution, and any manner of other things.
On the other hand, there are those of us who will maintain that Free Software is necessarily the best choice, and that those who disagree are wrong. This is not elitism, any more than it is elitis
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:2)
Where did I do that? Ok, fine, if you dig around on my scratchpad (it's on my site), you'll find I gave a positive reference to Pegasus Mail, which is apparently closed-source, but it's free, and it's the best mail client I've ever used, bar none.
However, in my first post I has pine in mind, which is not free-as-in-beer, but is included in every distro that I've ever loaded, except Debian,
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:2)
Since, as you say, plenty of alternatives exist, Debian must either make exceptions to allow for users' habits, or it must simply say: learn something else, install Pine yourself, or find another di
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:2)
Bruce
rants. (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever actually met the man and heard him rant? Most of his printed work is far from rant material. It's factual, positive and forward looking. Generally they are more positive than telling people in a Debian thread that you personally won't use Debian anymore.
Why am I labelled a troll for speaking up?
I don't know why. I would have moderated your post as flame bait. Wading into someone else's conversation about a social contract to tell them they are a bunch
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:2)
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:4, Insightful)
As we have seen from the SCO case, being anal about licensing and redistribution terms is unfortunately necessary. Better be safe than sorry.
a mater of resources, Mr. Fart. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm tired of all this "we hate software if it's not free"
You have it backwards. It's not that anyone hates software, it's that there's so much free software there's no reason to use things with restrictions. Why waste your time fooling around with something that's got strings attached when there are 5 or 6 free packages that do exaclty the same thing? How exactly do you hate software anyway?
What I'm tired of is all they hype of commercial software. I hate hearing loud mouths prom
Re:a mater of resources, Mr. Fart. (Score:2)
You're kidding, right? I own a Linux company [dhs.org]. I'm the active leader of a Linux Users Group [nolug.org]. I write free software [joeykelly.net].
Your need to see a doctor about your knee... it jerks too much, don't you think?
I think your post exemplifies my complaints about elitism.
Re:a mater of resources, Mr. Fart. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what are you doing posting drivel about people hating software? Change my view to see pounded posts, oh yes there it is:
Honestly, though, I'm tired of all this "we hate software if it's not free", and "GNU/"-everything cr4p. To each his own, I guess, but it gets kinda old after a while.
Joe, baby, this is a thread about the Debian Social Contract. If you don't want to listen to peopl
Re:Just in case you actually were serious (Doubtfu (Score:2)
Thanks.
Check your apt setup (Score:3, Informative)
Gnome 2.4, OpenOffice 1.0, Sodipodi 0.32+'
Check your apt-get setup, and update.
If you want a newer stable Debian, help. Debian is a volunteer organisation, after all; you don't
even need to be a DD. Just look at
http://www.debian.org/devel, look at the list of RC bugs, and post fixes to the BTS!
Regards,
Alastair McKinstry
Too late, it's already done! (Score:4, Informative)
Bruce
Re:Too late, it's already done! (Score:3, Informative)
Heck, OpenOffice 1.1 is in testing now.
Re:Too late, it's already done! (Score:2)
Re:Too late, it's already done! (Score:2)
Re:contrib (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Too late, it's already done! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:xfree 4.3 packages (Score:3, Informative)
You mean one of the strong points??? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, this is one of the things that has allways appealed to me about Debian. I use Debian for precisely that reason.
I long ago satisfied myself that Debian did at the very least a sufficient job of vetting the programs in their distro. I think of it as delegating that imprtant job. So, to a great degree, I know I can build a Debian/stable and set up a cron job to apt-get update and apt-get upgrade and be reasonably sure I'm up to date.
If Debian were to change this aspect of their opertion I would need to reconsider using that distro for the jobs I do. Principally, I use Debian for machines inside the firewall which just need to work. I don't need bleeding edge software, nor do I need to mop up the resulting pools of blood.
I know a lot of folks who make the similar complaint about Debian, and my response has allways been the same. You have literally dozens of distro's to select from. If Debian isn't giving you what you want, find another distro. Of course this is selfish, Debian does exactly what I want it to do, and I really would hate for that to change.
Re:You mean one of the strong points??? (Score:2)
I second that statement. Besides, if you want bleeding edge there are plenty of unofficial apt repositories for most anything you could want.
The problem I had in trying debian early on was that the install kernel was 2.2 only and did not support my hardware. I could have built my own install, I suppose, but at the time I had only one computer worthy of such a task and not enough spare hard drives to do it. Even earlier this year when I tried installing debian, again the install kernel was 2.2. All th
Re:Does this mean? (Score:2)
More maintainers is *NOT* the answer (Score:2)
Debian has plenty of maintainers. But packaging something like Gnome or OpenOffice, making it work on all the platforms that Debian supports, and dealing with clean upgrades is a non-trivial task.
And MONTHS is a bit of an exageration:
Gnome 2.4 was released September 11th.
OpenOffice.Org 1.1 was released October 1.
SodiPodi 0.31, okay, I'll give you that one.
You want faster releases? Come help, there's nothing stopping you from it.
And did you even *read* the ammendment? It's got nothing to do with get
I run Debian/Unstable (Score:2)
(Debian/Sid for PowerPC.)
Re:Again? (Score:5, Informative)
He's not stopping you from using qmail, nor is he stopping people from putting up their own apt sources (people do it every day!) that host non-free, he just wants it out of the project so it can be free of this bizarre dichotomy.
Re:Again? (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Again? (Score:2)
The Contrib portion of Debian is not Free software.
It is the contention that non-free software should not be included in "Debian".
This is not to prevent you from choosing to install contrib or other non-free software. This is to state that that software is not _part of Debian_.
It may not matter to many people that these non-free software packages are, or are not included. To call them part of
Re:Again? (Score:2)
Did you garble? The Contrib portion is Free Software that depends upon some piece of non-free software.
Bruce
Re:Again? (Score:2)
Contrib software (free itself, but requiring non-free software to function) does seem to me to be software that forces contamination to use.
I don't see that as a negative for that software, but I don't think that as a result it should be in
Re:Again? (Score:2)
The idea is that you could replace the non-free component, for example by providing a good free Java VM rather than the VM that some things depend upon, and then that software in Contrib could move into main.
The DFSG says things about the software being available in source and free to use, modify, and redistribute. That's hardly IE. W
Re:Again? (Score:2)
You're right. I read him wrong. And you know what? It would be in main then, because it would probably run on wine :-) But if it didn't, it would still belong in Contrib, and we'd look once in a while and see if Wine could support it now.
Bruce
Re:Again? (Score:2)
It should be in non-free, and should not be part of Debian, but that is not to say that people should not use it.
Re:Again? (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Exactly what I'm talking about... APPLE RULES (Score:4, Informative)