Debian insanity

[pvaneynd]

I could not stay silent anymore and commented on the DFSG v2 issues. I feel Debian is getting run over by fanatics. Where is the Debian rejected the close association with the FSF so that contrib and non-free could exist for the benefit of our users? Why is the license of the bloody firmware of any importance? Don't these people understand that a lot of what they consider hardware has been software for a long time? Will they demand that intel GPL's the microcode of the pentium IV soon? At least Marco D'Itri seems to have the correct idea. I know I should be out there, arguing without end in debian-legal and stuff, but I just do not have the time or energy to waste on their illusions.
Am I turing into Erik Naggum?

Comments

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

I pretty much stopped paying attention to Debian ages ago because of similar issues, and it seems like things are getting worse. I know I'm an evil, RMS hating bastard for not drinking the Free Kool-Aid, but I felt Debian was making things more difficult than they needed to be because of the extreme push to be Free. And there always seemed to be some people who were deluded enough to think that Debian somehow had the leverage to force the world to do it their way or be driven out of business. From those comments it looks like those folks have managed to grab power, which is unfortunate.

[vatine]

As far as I see it, firmware that is copyrighted without a "copy and distribute me, do not modify me" should *definitely* be OK for either contrib or non-free. Firmware with a copyright notice and no waiver (or, for that matter, without any indication as to its copyright status) should not be distributed by Debian, on accord of risking debian mirrors, people handing out Debian CDs and the like of being sued for copyright infringement.

I think I might even go as far as say "anything where the originating company has said it's OK for Debian (or the world in general) to copy and distribute the firmware" might even be suitable, for wholly pragmatic reasons, to be included in main.

OTGH, this whole debate is just another nail in the door blocking me from considering applying as a Debian developer.

[pvaneynd]

The funny thing is that RMS himself is "not free enough". The gnu documentation license is considered "non free", so all GNU documentation goes in non-free. Extending software ideas to documentation was already stupid, but extending them to hardware is beyond insane.
I fear we will see a split soon... Usable-Debian anyone?

[pvaneynd]

Debian needs sane people like you!

They even consider the bit loading the firmware to be non-free and accept as "current practice" that the kernel is exempt from this. Then they declared that would not support for hardware requiring firmware to function, neatly ignoring everything the industry is trying to do recently.

If this is not stopped Debian will be as relevant to the industry as amiga-OS now is ;-(.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that RMS himself is "not free enough".

I think that sums up how fscking stupid the situation must be. RMS is so extreme a lot of people already can't really take him seriously, at least as more than an idealist. If RMS isn't 'free enough', that's pretty scary really - and I think it shows a distinct detachment from the real world. Kool-Aid-Debian?

I think what is more likely is that the developers frustrated by the trend will just defect to something like Fedora, or Slackware, or some other distro which isn't quite so cultish.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

I think for many of us Debian hit the AmigaOS, AtariOS, OS/2, etc, point a while back. I stopped considering it for anything a few years ago when it looked, to me, like they were more interested in being a 'pure' OS than a 'usable' OS. Which is a fine goal and all, but to me it put them in a niche of 'not to be used for business' in my mind. Now, I'm probably biased - I pretty much personally went from Slackware to Red Hat and now I'm running Fedora. I've considered SuSE, but RHL and Fedora have always done what I need and worked reliably so I had no incentive to use anything else. But I've made Linux recommendations for various companies and my list has generally been - Red Hat, SuSE, and maybe TurboLinux.

[pvaneynd]

I converted a few RH 7.X servers to Debian with one argument: "apt-get dist-upgrade"
Does Fedora finally have something similar? Does it have alternatives? update-rc.d? debconf? A minimal install of 20 odd megs?
The RHAS 2.1 server I installed recently was pretty high on the "sucks" scale for me I fear...

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

The minimal install I have no idea about - I haven't installed on anything smaller than 500MB since ~1995, these days I usually give Linux at least 10GB on a multi-boot system since I do development and I like lots of space for multiple CVS checkouts, etc.

Fedora has the RH 'up2date' by default I believe, but YUM is commonly installed - and that's what I normally use. APT is also available, but I haven't used it.

[pvaneynd]

We have different targets I fear. When we install a server to do X in general we only want X on that server. All extra packages means another reason for a possible intervention later, so we have systems with IIRC 20 MB's of base, postfix, ssh and that's it. Not even "ftp" or scp to help possible crackers to download stuff.

[vatine]

Debian can have me as a developer when becoming a Debian developer is "less of a hassle" and there's less politics in Debian. I'm afraid that means "never" (I probably should've gotten on the train ages ago, shouldn't I).