Re: FS criteria -- software distribution examples

[John Darrington]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2007 at 08:43:00AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:


     Debian Does Not Promote Non-Free Software.

This statement is false. From the debian web site:
 "As a service to our users, we also provide [non-free] packages in separate
  sections that cannot be included in the main distribution."
Providing packages is promoting them.



     Debian contains no Non-Free Software, except as a serious bug.  

This statement is false, or at best misleading.  Simply saying that
the non-free components are not in part of the "official Debian
distribution" doesn't change anything.   They are simply deciding to
call a cow a "horse" and hope everyone forgets what it really is.

     The project merely tracks some of it and supports its misguided
     users.  

Thus, its offering legitimacy to them.  "Supporting" users of non-free
software is fine, if the purpose is to move them onto free
replacements, but this is clearly not what debian is doing.  They are
putting it into a seperate section and saying "because we've drawn a
magic circle around these non-free programs, it's ok to use them".
They are fooling themselves and their users.

     
     A few prominent free software activists wilfully ignore this and
     lie about the debian GNU OS, but that does not change reality.

I think that inflamatory statements like this are not constructive,
and I would appreciate it if you didn't make them here.
     

J'


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