The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.

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The "free" debate (again) <sigh>



> > > But I want to maintain the "purity" of the main distribution - that's the
> > > most important thing.
> >
> > I don't see how the "purity" is affected by allowing software that cannot
> > be redistributed in a modified form.  It's still free of cost and is freely
> > redistributable in its original form.  Personally, I think that's sufficient.
> 
> "pure" means "100% free software". If we allow software that cannot be
> redistributed in a modified form we are creating a "perverted"
> Linux-based GNU system.

Ahem...  The only "100% free software" is that software which is public
domain.  Period.  GNU is not 100% free because I am not free to do
everything I want with software licensed under the GPL.


> Have you read "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" by Richard Stallman?

Yes, I have (at some point).  That doesn't mean I agree with it completely,
though.


> A small quote:
> 
>     What does society need?  It needs information that is truly available
>     to its citizens--for example, programs that people can read, fix,
>     adapt, and improve, not just operate.  But what software owners
>     typically deliver is a black box that we can't study or change.
> 
> Software which may not be redistributed in modified form allows
> read and operate, stop. But not fix, adapt and improve, which are
> *very* important freedoms also. It follows this way:

This is not exactly true.  Fix, adapt, and improve are allowed in-house.
Those fixes, adaptations, and improvements can also find their way back
into the main source if the author agrees with it.


>    Society also needs freedom.  When a program has an owner, the users
>    lose freedom to control part of their own lives.
> 
> I use Linux because I like to have the control of my own computer...

I'm not suggesting you give up control of your own computer!  If you
don't want to install something with a slightly more restrictive license,
then don't!  Compile everything from source of which you've read every
sigle line for all I care.

But what gives you the right to determine what _others_ can use?  Don't
I have the right to chose?  And, assuming I do, don't I have the right
to be given all possible options?  By restricting what goes into the
primary distribution, you are limiting what some people have access to.
I'm a big boy now.  I can make my own choices without your help, thank you.

I think the best way to deal with all this would be to merge all of
the distribution (main, contrib, non-free) into one big tree and then
extend the priority to include "contrib", "unmodifyable", and "non-free".
People (including cd-manufactures) could easily exclude priorities that
they don't want to install/distribute.  Those of us that want a choice
can have one.


> You can read the entire text in /usr/lib/emacs/19.34/etc/WHY-FREE
> if you have emacs installed. It's very interesting.

I have.  I agree with parts of it, but not all of it.

                                          Brian
                                 ( bcwhite@verisim.com )

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