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How Sun's Java got into DebianHow Sun's Java got into DebianPosted May 25, 2006 19:44 UTC (Thu) by zooko (subscriber, #2589)Parent article: How Sun's Java got into Debian
"They could be loosely paraphrased as "it looks like we can get away with it, and, if that turns out not to be true, we'll just stop.""
Maybe Debian should apply this principle to all of the distribution and not just to special deals from certain corporations. There is probably quite a lot of software and other content which could find its way into the next Debian release which has heretofore been excluded by excessive concern about legal what-ifs!
Regards,
Zooko
P.S. I'm halfway serious. Unless you're a pessimist in which case I'm halfway sarcastic.
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As long as it's finally in, I'm happy Posted May 26, 2006 0:44 UTC (Fri) by kenyee (guest, #37992) [Link] As a user, I'm just happy I'm going to be able to do "apt-get install java" and have it get updated on dist-upgrades and it doesn't bother me one bit that it was added under cover of night to be part of a Sun PR event :-)
Up to now, people have had to try and figure out which version to download and install (made more complicated on the 64-bit Linux I'm running on because you have to decide whether to install Blackdown java, or Sun's 32-bit or 64-bit versions) and then it's their problem dealing for deciding on when to upgrade, etc. Anything to make this process less painful for Debian users is a plus in my book (and yeah, I use the Marillat archives for installing Myth, mplayer, and all the weird codecs that aren't part of the official Debian repos too...I just want the system to do what I want ;-)
Now, if Sun would just open source their Plugin so people can figure out how to get the 64-bit version of Java to run as a plugin in the 64-bit version of Mozilla so we don't have to run the 32-bit version of browsers in chroots....
As long as it's finally in, I'm happy (for how long?) Posted May 26, 2006 3:55 UTC (Fri) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link] And that will work just fine until the freedom goes away because no one cared. Then, the system will only work the way the proprietary vendors want it to. At that point you won't be able to do a damn thing about it.
if the proprietary vendors start flexing their legal idiots Posted May 26, 2006 14:29 UTC (Fri) by kenyee (guest, #37992) [Link] just take the package out :-)
What "freedoms" could go away? I still don't get what the big deal is...the important thing for the next step in Linux evolution is to make it easier for users (which is probably why Ubuntu has been so successful, even though I disagree w/ forking the Debien code so I've installed Kanotix instead)...
As long as it's ... in, I'm [un]happy Posted May 26, 2006 21:02 UTC (Fri) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] I'd always understood that non-free comprised Free Software which depended on something non-free to operate.Sun's Java is outrageously not Free, and has no business in either the Debian distribution, or in mirrors hosted by Debian, ``in the distribution'' or not.
As long as it's ... in, I'm [un]happy Posted May 27, 2006 0:40 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] The description of non-free on Debian's web site, in its entirety, is: Packages in this area have some onerous license condition restricting use or redistribution of the software.
As long as it's ... in, I'm [un]happy Posted May 27, 2006 8:58 UTC (Sat) by ajk (subscriber, #6607) [Link] What you are thinking about is "contrib". Non-free is ... non-free.
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