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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."
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?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Many (possibly most) of the programs in the "non-free" repository actually meet the FSF's definition of "semi-free" 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.
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.
As far as I can tell, only debian developers can vote, so what can a debian user do avoid this from being approved?
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.
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 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.
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
Debian doesn't detect hardware?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.