Even the freedom to use (and maintain) non-free is a freedom. The fact that there are still Debian developers who maintain packages in non-free goes to show that the time is not yet right.
Sure, SSH got freed, and that's a big win. But there are still a lot of packages in non-free that many of us *need*.
Frankly, I think this proposal does more harm than it does good. Eventually, there will be no need for this proposal, when there are good alternatives for non-free, developers will lose interest. That would be the time to close non-free.
As far as I can tell, it has not been demonstrated in any way that Debian is so strapped for resources that non-free needs to be removed. Remember that the maintainers of non-free packages do so out of their own free will. Quite likely they have a personal need for those packages, and will keep maintaining those debs even if the GR is passed. But you'd have to scour the net to find those packages. (KDE anyone?)
To maintain a separate archive and bug tracking system for non-free would consume *a lot* of time and expertise, which would be better spent on other things. Frankly, I fear it'd be a total mess as well.
I think we all would like this done eventually, but to do it now would be premature. We would eat our cake before it's baked.
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Even the freedom to use (and maintain) non-free is a freedom. The fact that there are still Debian developers who maintain packages in non-free goes to show that the time is not yet right.
Sure, SSH got freed, and that's a big win. But there are still a lot of packages in non-free that many of us *need*.
Frankly, I think this proposal does more harm than it does good. Eventually, there will be no need for this proposal, when there are good alternatives for non-free, developers will lose interest. That would be the time to close non-free.
As far as I can tell, it has not been demonstrated in any way that Debian is so strapped for resources that non-free needs to be removed. Remember that the maintainers of non-free packages do so out of their own free will. Quite likely they have a personal need for those packages, and will keep maintaining those debs even if the GR is passed. But you'd have to scour the net to find those packages. (KDE anyone?)
To maintain a separate archive and bug tracking system for non-free would consume *a lot* of time and expertise, which would be better spent on other things. Frankly, I fear it'd be a total mess as well.
I think we all would like this done eventually, but to do it now would be premature. We would eat our cake before it's baked.