[Klug-general] Debian question

[Andy Smith]

Hi George,

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 01:55:00PM +0100, George Prowse wrote:
> Andy Smith wrote:
> >I don't think you understand the issue; if you don't like Debian's
> >philosophy then it would be better to use a different distribution
> >than to suggest that Debian change in this fundamental way.  They
> >don't all have to be the same, and there is no objective "best"
> >answer because this isn't a technical matter.
> >
> It's not THAT fundamental, no-one would notice if you ammended it 
> slightly, no-one is saying get rid of it.

This is exactly what I mean by not understanding the issue.

Debian currently can't distribute Mozilla software because Debian is
not permitted to make changes to it.  It's a fundamental part of the
Debian social contract that Debian will only directly provide
software that is free (by their definition) and one of the
requirements of being free is that it can be modified.

That's why the Mozilla software was removed from main and replaced
by forks with different names (a legal requirement to avoid
infringing Mozilla's trademarks).

If you got rid of this requirement then it would be a significant
change and then yes, a lot of Debian developers would quit.

Rather than suggesting such a radical change for the sake of a few
packages, if users have a problem with it then why not just use a
distribution which is more in line with their views?

Of course, the Debian project has already discussed this to death
and already polled their own developers on what to do..

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/kent/attachments/20080522/91850231/attachment.bin