Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 4:23 UTC (Thu) by showell (guest, #2929)
Parent article: Debian: too free?

Both sides have valid arguments but both miss one point.

As a Debian user I want a solid and relatively up to date system and I rely on the debian community to deliver this. Does the community not feel some moral responsibility to deliver a system that is current and the most all encompassing that they can. It is always touted that under Open Software we can go elsewhere but there is a cost involved and I would rather stay and just "apt-get upgrade."

Then again we need to have pressure brought to force Linux support from vendors and Debian is doing that with their Social Contract.

My vote therefore is for rationalism here. Having a Sarge Exception seems a wholly reasonble thing to do.

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 14:43 UTC (Thu) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link] (2 responses)

Why would there be an obligation for the Debian project to provide something conforming to the expectations of a particular user or subset of users? Debian provides what it provides, and presumably whether you (or anyone) use it or not depends at least in part on the Debian project's policies.

I use Debian and non-free. I also have a few packages installed that weren't available directly from Debian. If they remove non-free I'll just have more packages from elsewhere until free alternatives exist. The point is that the Debian project aims to provide a "solid and relatively up to date" _free_ system. The "all encompassing" part is the end-user's problem. After all, even MS Windows, which is _intended_ to be proprietary and all-encompassing, doesn't come with GSView or CygWin installed ---the user has to download and install it him- or herself. With alternative apt sources available (though I personally prefer to build from tarred sources for non-Debian packages), Debian makes this even easier than Windows, and the likelihood is that if non-free were removed from Debian it would rapidly appear on one of these alternates.

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 16:51 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (1 responses)

Debian makes certain promises to its users in its Social Contract:

4. Our priorities are our users and free software
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. ...

Allowing sarge to languish forever and letting woody become unusable on current hardware would not serve the needs of Debian's users. So Debian has to solve this problem somehow, and there are people working on it.

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 17:39 UTC (Thu) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link]

Sure, and I agree that a special Sarge exception is a reasonable thing to do as a stop-gap measure. My only point was that the interests of the users aren't well-enough defined to say that those interests include an all-encompassing system. Keeping the world safe for free software could just as easily be considered in the interests of Debian's users (as opposed to, say, Lindows/Linspire users), and would preclude putting the kitchen sink (with its proprietary plumbing fixtures) into the distribution.