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Debian GNU is Not Unix Software

Debian Prepares To Vote On Non-Free Software 98

Posted by timothy from the definitional dept.
DJFelix writes "Manoj Srivastava, Debian Project Secretary, has posted a proposed General Resolution regarding the handling of the non-free section of Debian. This is very important to me, as I am a Debian maintainer who only maintains non-free packages. If you are a Debian non-free maintainer or Debian non-free user who does not want to see the non-free section disappear from Debian, I highly suggest you get involved."
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Debian Prepares To Vote On Non-Free Software More

Debian Prepares To Vote On Non-Free Software

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  • The Ultimate Question (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xilmaril ( 573709 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:22PM (#8380276)
    this is quite an important decision.

    freedom vs. usability?
    freedom vs. laziness?

    the difference is strictly opinion, I suppose

    personally, I hope it disappears, but I can definetly see how that would hurt some people.

    • the problem (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The problem is that "freedom" isn't always the same for every geographical region. This is especially true when it comes to patent-protected technologies, since software patents are not univerally recognized.

      But Debian lumps everything into one of two categories. Free, or Non-Free. If there's any *portion* that's Non-Free, they treat the whole thing as Non-Free.

      A good example would be the GIMP non-free section, which contains the ability to write GIF files. The LZW patent has expired in the U.S., but

  • Scare tactics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:23PM (#8380290)
    They are not proposing to delete all non-free software off the debian servers. They are only proposing to not make it an option in the installer by default.

    Since most anyone who uses debian is familiar with apt sources, it would be trivial to add another apt line in your sources.list to get your non-free software. (If you're not familiar with apt sources, you're probably running RedHat?)

    Hmm.

    • Re:Scare tactics (Score:3, Funny)

      by El ( 94934 )
      If you're not familiar with apt sources, you're probably running RedHat You mean it's just like rpm? ;-)

    • more than that (Score:4, Informative)

      by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:52PM (#8380580) Homepage
      The proposal is also to drop support for the non-free section. What, exactly, this entails is not completely clear to me (and I'm a Debian developer), but at the least, I think it means no guarantees of security updates or even bug fixes.

      Also, the non-free repository is currently mentioned by the Debian Social Contract, which is part of the Debian Constitution, so it has to be there. This proposal removes it from the Social Contract, clearly opening the door for the repository to be removed entirely in the future. (Which may be just as well if there are no security updates.)
      • no guarantees of security updates or even bug fixes.

        How would you make a guarantee like that anyway? Those are the kinds of things that free (libre) software enable us to do.
        • If I hadn't squandered those modpoint (making sure i'll never get any other on this account:). I'd mod you up. (and grandparent wouldn't be a +4 informative).
        • Actually, the majority of software in the non-free archive actually has source code available. There are things like povray which comes with source code but cannot be sold.
      • Yes, exactly right. It means "no guarantees" and "we can remove it entirely in the future".

        Aside from snipping non-free out of the release process, it doesn't mean any more than that.

    • Re:Scare tactics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:58PM (#8381186) Homepage
      This runs deeper than you would think. Debian is built and steered by volunteers. Demonstrate a commitment and aptitude and you will be included in their group. Within this broad association of "Debian Developers" are a few who have some moral stick up their butt about anything not GPL'd.

      It comes up reguarly but this is the first time (that I know of -- they don't keep a history of failed resolutions) that it wasn't dismissed out of hand. A few months ago someone came up with a magical list of software in non-free. The result was basically acroread, java and some decompression tools. This data comes from popcon [debian.org]. What they don't tell you there is what sorts of ways the pop-con program distorts things. Pop-con is not well known among users. It also requires a functioning mail server, something many desktop installations forgoe. Nearly every linux installation in our College of Engineering runs Debian, but they don't use pop-con. And the sample size of people reporting with popcon is fairly small compared to the actual size. One can argue that statistical sampling means a lot even at 10 percent of the population, but there's a good chance.

      Myself, I run Debian unstable and hardly pay attention to what's non-free. I do know that some of my stuff, like the NVIDIA drivers packaged by Debian, are very non free and very useful. Acroread is also invaluable. If Debian drops support for non-free, I may be looking for a new distro. I wonder how UserLinux feels about the situation, given Bruce's GUI choices were based on being able to make software for any purpose without restriction, including commercial exploitation.
      • some of my stuff, like the NVIDIA drivers packaged by Debian, are very non free and very useful

        I beg to differ. If there were no crapware driver, there would have been a quality nv driver long ago. Like the situation with ATI. We have Gatos, DRI, and stock XFree drivers that work great on anything less than a Radeon 8500, but as soon as you get into the chipsets where ATI has a binary driver, there is little to no support in the free drivers.

        You can say I have a moral stick up my but if you like,
        • There are no quality free drivers. The ATI DRI drivers have terrible performance.
          • Bull. The drivers for my Radeon 7200 All In Wonder are awesome. I can't wait until they support the newer cards so I can upgrade.
            • It is well-known that the DRI drivers for the Radeon cards are much slower than the Windows or XIG drivers for them. In many cases, especially on high-polygon-count scenes like those used in CAD apps, the DRI drivers are a half to a third as fast as the XIG ones!
              • For what I do, the stability is what matters. DRI performance is secondary to that. The 7200 doesn't perform all that well to begin with, but I'm very sceptical about your figure of 1/3 as fast. Actually having support for the multimedia features of my card is a huge plus for Gatos. I can't imagine sacrificing support for the tuner, or video capture. Not to mention with all the talk of XFree forking these days, relying on a proprietary closed source driver is not a good plan IMHO.
                • Just because the drivers meet your needs doesn't mean that they are high quality. A slow driver might still be useful, but it is *not* high quality. Hence, my original statement stands --- there are no high quality open 3D drivers.

                  And I never said that they were always 1/3 as fast. On some tests they are 1/3 as fast. On the benchmarks I linked to, in nearly every single test, the DRI drivers come in dead last. I think once they managed to come in third.
                  • A slow driver might still be useful, but it is *not* high quality.

                    But your point was moot, because you cited a benchmark for a Radeon 9000, which is exactly the GPU family I was talking about that has crappy support in the free drivers. I don't consider this driver slow.
                    • Compared to the XiG Summit drivers, the DRI drivers for the 7x00 are much much slower as well. And I cannot find anything that says the r200 drivers are any slower than the r100 drivers.
                    • the DRI drivers for the 7x00 are much much slower as well

                      Weren't you the one calling my evidence shaky? The drivers for the 7x00 (R100) were open source, funded by ATI. I'm not knocking the XiG drivers by the way. I think its just great if XiG can make cash catering to the CAD market. I'm not about to shell out money for video card drivers that don't support the multimedia features of my card though. I'm knocking ATI for its change in attitude. They once supported us, and now are forcing this bina
                    • I didn't call your evidence shaky, though it is. You initially made the claim that your drivers were "awesome" but you haven't posted any benchmarks to show that the OSS process has actually resulted in fast, conformant drivers. I'll post a benchmark showing the opposite, though: Look at the Radeon 7x00 scores. [xig.com]

                      In any case, being faster than ATI's binary drivers is not big win. ATI's Linux drivers suck as bad as their earlier Radeon Windows drivers did. And every benchmark I've seen shows that the ATI DRI
                    • I didn't call your evidence shaky

                      My apologies, this thread has been going on way too long. That was someone else.

                      being faster than ATI's binary drivers is not big win

                      Sure it is, like I said, XiG drivers are fine, good for them for catering to the CAD market. My problem is with the hardware vendors withholding documentation, and giving us a binary driver instead.

                      there are no high-quality open-source 3D drivers

                      And I beg to differ, because these drivers are great. AND were created because
                    • On second look.. Please drop your stupid sig. It's getting old.
            • It is well known that the ATI DRI drivers are slower than even the proprietory ATI Linux ones (which suck) and much slower than the ATI Windows or XIG drivers. In high-detail OpenGL scenes, the DRI drivers can be less than half as fast. Good benchmark here. [hispeed.ch]
      • I also run a few Debian systems, although I mostly run "stable", with a few backports. For the examples I've seen cited in this thread, I don't use Debian packages at all -- my acroread, NVidia kernel drivers, and Blackdown Java are installed from the appropriate tarballs.

        Now, this is not a general solution -- it only works on x86 systems, and going outside the package system only works if the thing you're getting isn't a dependency for other packages. Nevertheless, in my experience, this is almost alway

    • Re:Scare tactics (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by bruthasj ( 175228 )
      > you're probably running RedHat?

      Wake up, troll. It might surprise you that Connectiva brought apt into the world of rpm for a couple of years now. I guess I could troll back by remarking about how outdated Debian is... but that would be -- ignorant -- wouldn't it?

  • Not that bad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:25PM (#8380305)
    Although everybody should have the choice of using non-free software, shouldn't it be distributed as an add-on instead of part of the base distro? Or am I missing something here?

    • Re:Not that bad (Score:5, Informative)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:31PM (#8380365) Homepage Journal
      *Amendment Text The actual text of the amendment is:
      Propose that the Debian project resolve that:

      Acknowledging that some of our users continue to require the use of
      programs that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, we
      reaffirm our commitment to providing the contrib and non-free areas in
      our archive for packaged versions of such software, and to providing the
      use of our infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing
      lists) to help with the maintenance of non-free software packages.*

      seems to me that it's about using debians resources on making them packages available.

      whats the easiest way to vote that "hell yes, It's good to have them?"
    • It is an add-on currently. And there are two proposals: the first is to drop support for the existing non-free add-on section; the second is to "affirm" that it will continue to be supported. Obviously these are somewhat at cross-purposes. :)

      • Re:Not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Cecil ( 37810 )
        I disagree with that interpretation. It wouldn't make sense to append an amendment that says "nevermind, actually, do the exact opposite." Especially if it would need majority to pass, when defeating the original only requires a quarter against.

        What the amendment is saying, is: granted that we're no longer including non-free packages in any distributions from now on, we will still provide the non-free software that's in older distributions, as well as continuing to offer bug tracking and mailing lists for
        • Right, there is one resolution, and one amendment. The amendment is not the opposite of the resolution. Those against the resolution can simply vote against. However, the way I read the amendment, it says "though we will not _release_ non-free, we will continue to host it online as before". So it's not just about non-free packages from older distributions.
        • That makes a lot more sense.

  • I have mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:40PM (#8380463) Homepage
    Many (possibly most) of the programs in the "non-free" repository actually meet the FSF's definition of "semi-free" [fsf.org] software. Basically, this is non-commercial-but-otherwise-free software, i.e., it comes with the rights to use, copy, modify, and redistribute, but not the right to sell. I don't think this sort of software should be part of the system (and indeed, the non-free repository is not part of Debian), but aside from that, I don't find it objectionable.

    What I'd really like is to replace "non-free" with "semi-free", and only allow semi-free software in - but nobody has proposed that. Oh well.
    • What about the stuff in non-free which isn't actually software? There is some documentation in there as well, for example the RFCs. In addition, it looks like the GFDLed documentation will be moved to non-free eventually. If this measure passes, we would loose that as well.

  • Warning: Your free distribution will be tained... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by braddeicide ( 570889 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:42PM (#8380481)
    New users will install base, and be disappointed when they see the programs they want are not in apt. They don't know a decision has been made to make it harder to search/install non-free software. They probably have never looked at sources.list

    I think a better solution would be a warning by APT if you install a non-free package that your free distribution will be tainted by the non-free packages license. Like when you add non-free kernel modules to the kernel.

  • Voting (Score:3, Informative)

    by Blue Meanie ( 25306 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @08:46PM (#8380525)

    Voting begins on Sunday, March 7 at 23:59:59 UTC.

    Voting ends on Sunday, March 21 at 23:59:59 UTC.

    Link: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002 [debian.org]

    How to Vote: http://www.debian.org/vote/howto_vote [debian.org]

    • But if your public key isn't in the Debian keyring, this information will not be very useful to you.
      • ...and your public key doesn't enter the Debian keyring unless you're a Debian Developer. Regardless, it is still an interesting topic for the end-user to keep tabs on. It will eventually affect how they use Debian.

        Things to keep in mind:

        Even if Debian stops supporting (distributing binaries and bug-tracking) non-free software, a

    • http://www.debian.org/vote/howto_vote

      "Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC September 25, 1998"

      I guess it is too late to vote then!
  • Have a read of this page [gnu.org] if you will be voting. :)

    • Re:Blah (Score:1)

      by Tri ( 60119 )
      That's really clever considering that the GFDL licensed documentation from a number of GNU projects looks like it's going to end up in non-free due to its restrictive license.

  • votes is for devs only? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EisBar ( 324026 ) on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:16PM (#8380777)
    As far as I can tell, only debian developers can vote, so what can a debian user do avoid this from being approved?
    • Raise your voice on the appropriate debian mailing list or irc channel.(I however recommend finding some really, really good arguments first, you'll have to convince other people, trolling won't do neither will simple disagreement). But I'm quite sure you already knew that.

    • Re:votes is for devs only? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Become a DD and do the work yourself. That's the only way.

  • bad idea (Score:2, Interesting)

    by abrotman ( 323016 )
    This is probably a horrible idea. I'm not a Debian developer, but I use it and enjoy the idea that I can add non-free to my sources. If non-free were to go away, I would probably not recommend Debian to a newcomer. I believe that Debian should support its users wishes(not the developers), and noone is forcing anyone to use non-free.

  • non-free (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _aa_ ( 63092 ) <j.uaau@ws> on Tuesday February 24, 2004 @09:56PM (#8381165) Homepage Journal
    I use debian pretty much exclusivly now. While I do appreciate and enjoy other distros from time to time, debian is the distro with which I am most familiar, and most comfortable.

    I'm presently running unstable, and yes I do have non-free packages installed. I do however very much encourage debian to dump non-free.

    For those who fear they may be inconvinienced by the lack non-free need only look toward apt-get.org [apt-get.org] or other unofficial apt repositories. Or of course you can simply install non-free packages from source or binary form direct from the software creator.

    If debian does drop non-free, I will continue to use debian, and I will still likely have non-free software on my system (nvidia-glx), though the inconvinience (if any) will encourage me to give free alternatives more attention.
    • For those who fear they may be inconvinienced by the lack non-free need only look toward apt-get.org or other unofficial apt repositories. Or of course you can simply install non-free packages from source or binary form direct from the software creator.

      Both of those methods mean that you miss out on one of the best aspects of Debian, which is the package management and the huge variety of what's in there. If you have to start pulling things from all over the place, it's so inconvenient. Reminds me of the
      • well, if you visit apt-get.org and follow the instructions, you'll see that adding unofficial sources to /etc/apt/sources/list is far from a chore. Debian will still more than be able to accomodate non-free packages. There's absolutly nothing stopping all the non-free maintainers from making their own unofficial repository, and moreover, nothing stopping non-free maintainers from releasing their own version of debian which could include non-free packages. Knoppix does this, for instance. The original core g
  • what software are we actually talking about? Something vital or something that is added on like utilities?

  • Debian should lead (Score:3, Insightful)

    by raphae ( 754310 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @12:21AM (#8382662)
    I think that Debian can and should fill a very important role in the world of software and information technology and remain at the forefront of the free software movement and continue to push the envelope of freedom by leading forward strongly in the direction of complete freedom.

  • good. (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by d_i_r_t_y ( 156112 )
    debian/RMS zealots are the worst enemies that linux has. the GPL and the open source movement may be the best thing that has happened to the IT industry since the invention of the personal computer, but a religious adherence to the notion that *all* software *must* be free as well as open source does linux more harm than good.

    free software zealots are linux's greatest enemy, not microsoft. by marginalising itself further from the linux mainstream, debian is tacitly endorsing this religious fervour, to ever

  • No big deal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alex_tibbles ( 754541 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @08:12AM (#8384666) Journal
    Debian exists to give easy access to *free* software. Non-free is just an optional extra. The packages will still be accessible from non-standard apt sources, so don't sweat it! People who want to provide such sources can; people who want to use them can. Debian will never *prevent* people doing what they want, because it will be 100%, therefore modifiable, redistributable etc.

    One possibly important point is that Debian cannot be the FSF-approved GNU/Linux (/whatever else) distro until it removes non-free [debian.org].

    On a side note, there are a few points where non-free software is by far the best available, or the only realistic alternative. These are the places where free software development can be really useful.

    An example of a technical challenge that is really now maturing is free Java environments - classpath, kaffe etc are getting good enough to be viable on their own without non-free Sun stuff.

    Many areas that need work are beyond mere hacking but require serious social/political work - like Nvidia drivers another poster talked about, and Flash plugins etc (similar issue - non-free plugins/kernel modules are a pain when ABI/API changes).

    Anyway, back to topic - Debian is about user freedom. This include the freedom to add non-free software, at your own choice, but the core is about free software.

    • Re:No big deal (Score:2, Informative)

      by debian4life ( 701155 )
      I concur. If people want to get "non-free" software, they can just get it somewhere else. That being said, I would leave it up to the software originator. If they don't mind having their software GPL'd, then they just put it in the regular repositories. If they do mind, then it does not go in there.

      The only non-free thing I have ever used is unrar. There are so many other places to get it that I am not going to stop using Debian because I have to go to more than one place to get Linux software. I don
      • I would hope that the software would continue to be available somewhere like apt-get.org. I do think the religious wars aroound this are silly but I do respect the passion and work of the developers.

  • This dismays me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by twem2 ( 598638 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @12:37PM (#8387220) Journal
    The view any computer user should take is to use the best software for the job, not is this software 'free' by some set of standards. Debian are producing a product for users and should take the user's needs into consideration not petty politics which could have an adverse effect on their users.
    This will also cause problems with a central part of the system, the man pages. The upstream package now contains non-free (by Debian standards) POSIX man pages so the man-pages package may have to be moved to non-free or split with part going into non-free.

    And the clinching argument against this move is the loss of rogue from the distribution as it is packaged in bsdgames-nonfree. Every Unix systme should contain a copy of Rogue so hours can be whiled away searching for the amilet of yendor ;-)

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