On 11/09/2013 01:42 PM, legacy daily wrote:
DFSG rocks! FOSS is the right way. I use Debian strictly because of its
adherence to these principles. There is plenty of dogma and bending of rules
elsewhere. If it changes its principles it will be something else maybe Ubuntu
or something else but not Debian any longer.
- ld
Let me point out that while I'm not a fan of dogma, I can respect if it
is something other users find important. I still hold to my opinion
though that the idea of "free software" or "open source" is not likely
to be that important to the average end user who doesn't have any
particular need or desire to see the source code.
Please understand I think FOSS is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and VERY high
quality. I certainly appreciate it myself as a programmer. My point is
more toward the usability and perception issues that often plague many
Linux distributions, due in no small part to a blind "we must be free"
mentality I often see. A good term for it is zealotry. I'm not the type
who actually views whether software is open sourrce as a moral/ethical
issue. A legal one, certainly, but only in the sense that licenses do
have an impact how individuals, groups, and businesses will end up using
the software.
On Nov 9, 2013, at 1:01 PM, Nate Bargmann <n...@n0nb.us> wrote:
* On 2013 09 Nov 10:49 -0600, Conrad Nelson wrote:
I like Debian. My only real beef with it is the DFSG. Debian
developers (And a lot of users.) operate a little too much under the
assumption end-users actually care about things such as source code
being available and I do think this is why Debian is kept from being
as popular as it could be. Great for forking distributions off of,
however. While certainly, as a programmer, I can appreciate having
source code for the software I use, I am way more a follower of the
Torvalds philosophy ("Use what works best for you and your
hardware." over the Stallman philosophy (The false notion that
software being open source is some sort of moral issue.). You'll
often see me on this mailing list ranting at someone who invokes
"it's closed source, so it's automatically bad." Debian tends to go
out of its way to appease the Free Software Foundation for zero
benefit (Or respect from RMS.) whatsoever.
IMO, Debian does a good job providing, or at least staying out of one's
way, support for using non-DFSG software. It may be a bit unfair to say
that "Debian goes out of its way to appease the Free Software Foundation
for zero benefit (Or respect from RMS.) whatsoever." as if that were
true, then various GNU documentation would not be placed in non-free
when it has opted to use certain aspects of the GNU Free Document
License. DFSG is actually closer to the pragmatic Open Source
philosophy than the dogmatic Free Software philosophy, IMO.
Staying out of one's way is fine. I'm not going to say Debian gets in
the way. I think that's a different issue entirely, howver.
I mostly disagree. To a point. Let me try and clarify what I meant by my
beef with the DFSG. It's maybe less the DFSG and more the way Debian's
developers have come to apply it. Again, case in point, the firmware
issue. The ENTIRE reason they took it out of their media was political.
There was nothing in the license for said firmware that said they
couldn't include it. They just plain didn't do it because the firmware
were binary blobs. To me, as a practical-minded user, that's a stupid
reason and was frankly a bad idea.
Here's another example: While Debian's come a long way, for multimedia
you STILL basically have to set up the third party Debian Multimedia
repository because Debian refuses to provide a TON of media capability
that even teh average user comes to expect on the desktop. This one is
less the DFSG and more fear that things like libdvdcss might be marred
by legal problems. So in this, to be fair, it's probably less Debian's
philosophy.
The reason I say Debian went out of its way to appease the FSF is
because I've actually WITNESSED Debian going out of its way to appease
the FSF, to the point several years ago they almost made the mistake of
scrapping their "unsupported unofficial repos" just so they could say
"Stallman might actually respect us more." We really should be grateful
they didn't do this because Debian would have gone from arguably the
most influential distribution in the Linux atmosphere to hitting
complete irrelevance to near complete inability as a desktop.
Anyway, to be fair, Debian doesn't go that horribly far. But if you ever
want a demonstration of how useless a 100% purely "FSF-friendly" can be,
give gNewSense a whirl.
Perhaps my biggest technical gripe is a side effect of the Debian
philosophy: Good luck ever actually installing Debian over a
wireless network on their official media, as they shortsightedly
decided that "philosophy" is more important than "install Debian on
a laptop." Another gripe is how much they hold back mainstream
Debian for their pet projects that stand very little chance of
significant adoption (Debian kfreebsd: BSD is in a decline, and
(Debian Hurd) I see very little point in Hurd, as the project is
virtually dead.). This keeps Debian from switching to better stuff
like systemd (Yes, I know systemd is in the repos.) that could make
better use of the Linux kernel.
I'll agree that the installer could use some tweaking between the
technical and philosophical regarding wireless drivers. I'm not a
Debian Developer so I don't have any idea what discussions/bug reports
have taken place in this area. I do know that I've had to do the
initial install using the wired connection and then install the proper
kernel package to get the needed firmware. Even with this
inconvenience, Debian doesn't just remove those parts and say, "Good
luck!"
Technically they do. Though it is a minor inconvenience to wire up a
laptop, it shouldn't be necessary when the only reason you have to do
that to install Debian on a laptop is a purely political decision on the
part. And it is a real pain to figure out exactly what the installer is
looking for when you have removable media with firmware installed or
will simply flat out refuse to pick up on needed firmware. For this
reason I automatically go to unofficial "evil" firmware-included
installation media now.
As for the other architectures, so long as someone is willing to work on
keeping them current, I think the upside to having them is that it does
make for a more solid distribution and it helps upstream projects be
more portable and, as with several years ago with the SCO lawsuits,
should the unthinkable occur and the Linux kernel have some legal action
against it, the other kernels represent a fall-back position for Debian
and its community. While that seems like a long shot these days, it may
be important in the future.
I have to dispute this one. First off, it's quite improbable anyone can
find anything tangible in the Linux kernel that would be actually that
far into infringing territory. The SCO lawsuits themselves are a lousy
example largely because Darl McBride has been documented as being 100%
aware he didn't have anything that'd stand up in court. SCO didn't even
come close to actually threatening Linux. All they did was just cost
Novell a lot of money and embarrass themselves.
Even if there WAS a genuinely infringing portion of the Linux kernel, it
wouldn't kill Linux dead. At worst we'd have to abandon a large part of
the tree, but unless they can establish that the ENTIRE kernel is
basically stolen code or technology, it just won't lead to the
Armageddon scenario you outlined here.
But let's say hypothetically somehow Linux is completely illegal by some
legal fluke:
Hurd - Not even remotely a credible option for a fallback. As I stated
before, it's a virtually dead project. It took over a decade just to get
SATA and USB support, in an ecosystem where other open source kernels
could get that in their trees within a MONTH of the technology being
introduced. It doesn't even work on most systems outside of a virtual
machine and a lot of prayer. And it sees so very little activity as
well. A patch every now and then usually by someone trying to make some
sort of proof-of-concept experiment out of Hurd. It should be noted that
Hurd is dead due in no small part to the fact the Linux kernel already
exists in the place Hurd was intended.
kfreebsd - Okay, here you might have something. But you know what? We
already HAVE a system based on kfreebsd... it's called FreeBSD. Why does
Debian need to reinvent this wheel? Just for the sake of creating a
FreeBSD system which uses APT? That makes little sense to me especially
in light of the fact that the chance of the Linux kernel suddenly
disappearing is virtually none. But still, in a hypothetical world where
the Linux kernel is illegal THEN maybe this could be a good direction
for Debian to go.
I stand by my original point: The Hurd and kfreebsd flavors of Debian
are a waste of resources when they could make Debian a more tightly
integrated Linux system. It'd be great if Debian actually could do
something like switch to systemd and be one of the first "mother
Linuxes" to actually abandon the awful sysvinit setup that not even most
UNIX today have to put up with anymore. The reason this isn't happening
is because Debian wants kfreebsd where maybe a handful of long-term
users are even likely? For Hurd where it's almost guaranteed there's NO
serious long-term prospects? These little side projects for Debian are
still, in my opinion, a waste of Debian's potential and resources.
- Nate
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