Debian Prepares To Vote On Non-Free Software

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."

Comments

The Ultimate Question

[xilmaril]

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.

Scare tactics

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[xenocide2]

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. 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.

Re:Not that bad

[Cecil]

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 those packages.

Note the part where it says "in our archive".

Debian should lead

[raphae]

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.

No big deal

[alex_tibbles]

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.

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:This dismays me

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

That's a very fine opinion, but who are you to tell me what view I (as a member of the set of "any computer user") should take?

Should I also vote for the President that will provide me with the most economic impact, regardless of how much freedom he will take away?

Also, you (as far as I can tell) are not a member of the Debian project, so what right do you have to tell them what view they should take? When you start contributing, you can have a say.