Re: GNU/Hurd section in webpages

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 11:03:55AM +0000, Robert Millan wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 08:19:25AM +0300, Ognyan Kulev wrote:
> > Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> > >In fact, FSF polict _prohibits_ any kind of reference to non-free
> > >software.
> > 
> > I'm just curious: Let's imagine that in some way Debian forbids contrib 
> > and non-free sections in Debian GNU/Hurd port.  Will this allow linking 
> > from the Hurd site to Debian GNU/Hurd page?
> 
> We're in the process for getting rid of non-free [1]. In the next days we'll
> decide [2] wether a simple or a 3:1 majority is required to modify the Social
> Contract.

We're in the process of voting on the issue.  We are in the process of
voting on the issue since June 7, 2000, and it is controversial.  Undoubtly,
there will be people who say we need Netscape 4.7 or whatever other broken
proprietary software they want to use.  There will still be references to
non-free in the contrib section (which will have a similar status has it is
now).

But who knows?  Maybe it will happen some day that GNU will be able to
endorse Debian GNU/Linux.  You'd see a happy person (me :).

> As for contrib I don't have a problem with it, it's all free software and
> eventualy it can be fixed to be in main. It just needs someone to fix the
> dependencies.

Software in contrib depends, references, and endorses proprietary software.
Sometimes, if you install a package from contrib, it will tell you that you
should download and install some non-free program, or do something similar.
I think it owuld be reasonable if Debian contrib section would be available
only under a different hostname (server) and not enabled by default
(silently).  It's sufficient if GNU can release an installer with that
latter property (ie, the default Debian installer could still enable contrib
by default).
 
Those are only some of the requirements that came up last time this issue
was discussed (quite extensively discussed, I might add).  But they might
give you the general idea.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    address@hidden
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
address@hidden
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/