Call for Votes

["James A. Robinson" <jimr@simons-rock.edu>]

My vote is mostly no. We don't want to substitute our own agenda for
FSF.  However, I do think we can comprimise by simply taking
suggestions and going over the pros and cons -- just like every other
suggestion to hit Debian.  My opinions regarding their requests are
appended.


Jim

Subject: exchange with Richard Stallman

1.  Distributing unstripped binaries is not pratical, and it isn't
necessarily desired.  Do we expect our end-users to _want_ to debug
the programs? No. Program problems are what the bug-list system is
for.  When I read the manifesto about support, I found the following:

	   If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get
	GNU free without service, a company to provide just service to
	people who have obtained GNU free ought to be profitable.(3)

	   We must distinguish between support in the form of real
	programming work and mere handholding.  The former is
	something one cannot rely on from a software vendor.  If your
	problem is not shared by enough people, the vendor will tell
	you to get lost.

While we aren't in the position of wanting to make a profit, we DO
support helping people in terms of real programming _and_ in terms of
hand-holding.  Our policy has been to a) see if the problem is with
our build or debian-specific packaging, or b) see if it is a problem
in the upstream source code.  If it is a), we fix it.  If it is b), we
may try and fix it and send the patch upstream, or we may just do some
debugging and then forward our findings to the author.  So the
end-user needing to be able to debug their programs is not a real
consideration -- I don't believe there are many people who don't want
to use the help system and do want to have unstripped binaries taking
up valuable hard-drive space.  Because we have the framework in place
to help anybody with problems, and because we are there to act as a
buffer between the end-user and the upstream author, we don't need to
support unstripped binaries.  Now, I don't think it would be any
problem to support putting in the FLAGS for debian.rules that several
people have mentioned.If the FSF wants end-users to come directly to
them, then they can make the unstripped binaries and distribute them
under a different name.  It shouldn't be too hard for them to do this
with the build-scripts we have put into place as a standard.


2.  I don't see too much difficulty with simply mentioning the fact
that TeXinfo exists, and _is_ one solution to the documentation
problem.  Personally, I think TeXInfo is a poor choice.  The info
program has an obsolete and poorly designed interface, and the
language isn't particularly easy to use.  Linuxdoc-SGML, LaTeX, HTML
all have their problems, but they are still better choices.  However,
I don't see any problem in telling people something like:

	The FSF would like to encourage people to use TeXInfo if
	they write documentation. Debian uses many different formats,
	including Linuxdoc-SGML and HTML.  Please see the packages
	foo, bar, and baz if you are interested in using any of these
	markup languages.


3.  We are working, and will alway be working, on making installation
easier. Every single distribution's interface and setup could be
improved in one way or another, and we _are_ improving ours.  You
wouldn't recognize the interface from two years ago when you compare
it to the current one.  This isn't an easy problem to solve, it takes
a lot of time and hard work from people like Bruce and Ian and all the
others.  As we evolve, it will improve and it will be easier to use.
If other folks, like people funded to work on FSF projects, are
willing to step up and pitch in, we certainly won't reject their help.
But we don't want to take a lot of time without putting out a complete
distribution.  Like a lot of GNUish authors, we are all doing this in
our spare time -- and lots of us have found that spare time is in
short supply during the academic year.  In short, we are always trying
to improve.


4.  This is a very large ideological difference between us and FSF.  I
think it is clear to all of us that Debian is not going to go anywhere
if we limit our functionality to only absolutely free (I assume
copyleft?)  programs, and refuse to mention our non-free section.  We
are here to provide a freely-available (FTP) distribution, we are not
interested in selling it, but we are interested in supporting as many
packages as we can.  We place packages in the non-free directory
because we want to make it easy for people who want to make commercial
CDs, but taking out all mention of these packages is not something
that is compatible with our charter to provide a complete, easy to
use, and friendly Linux distribution.  When you come down to it, the
distribution is our contribution back to the free software world.
People DON'T have to install non-free packages, they are not
integrated into the main system (unlike many other distributions). In
my mind it is the same as people who DON'T have to use Microsoft
software if they object to Microsoft's philisophy. A piece of text on
their harddrive that mentions the existance of non-free software is
not going to corrupt their ideology any more then a Microsoft Office
ad in Computer Shopper is going to.  If they DO want the software, and
a free alternative is not available, well that says something in and
of itself, doesn't it?  People write those UNIX utilities, UNIX OS
clones, editors, graphics applications, etc., because they WANT a
good, free program.  We have seen people starting to write clones of
Word (Xword), or write programs like SCEDA, GIMP, and Octave -- but
until free versions of everything in non-free are available, we need
to keep it and we need to mention their existence.