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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Re: The "free" debate (again) <sigh>

> > 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".
> 
> "unmodifiable" is a synonym for "unmaintainable" IMHO.

It is not Debian's mandate to fix all bugs in every package.


> If a package's copyright prohibits us from fixing its bugs, we certainly do
> not want other packages from the main distribution depending upon it in any
> way.
> 
> For example, let's say PAM was under an "unmodifiable" licence, and we used it
> in the main distribution for all login access, and a bug turned up in PAM.
> Debian would be FUBAR.

So don't make an essential piece of code depend on something that is
under a lower priority.  That's already general policy.  That doesn't
mean that "leaf" packages can't have these restrictions or that something
of the same priority (or lower) can't depend on it.


> This need for independence is reflected quite nicely be the current main vs.
> non-free & contrib split, which also allows people to selectively mirror just
> the main distribution.

A valid point, but the number of people who mirror the distribution is
insiginificant compared to the number of people who use the distribution
from CD or something.  The point here is to make the largest amount of
software available to the greatest number of people.


> > 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've already got the choice.  What you seem to be objecting to is the
> entirely intentional discrimination that we apply to "unmaintainable" packages.

I _know_ that choice is already there.  I was pointing this out to show that
that choice does not go away.

And yes, that's exactly what I'm objecting to.  I don't see how it
accompishes anything except restrict Debian's desireability to some
people because of less software apparently being available.


> and from an earlier mail, Brian wrote:
> > It's still free of cost and is freely redistributable in its original form.
> > Personally, I think that's sufficient.
> 
> Cost has got almost nothing to do with it --- M$ Internet Explorer is
> currently free of charge (until they kill Netscape with their monopolistic
> tactics), but I don't think that makes it qualify as freeware in any useful
> sense.

I would disagree.  It's useful in the free sense because it can be
distributed with other software and thus make a system more complete
by adding web browsing capability.

It's not our place to make decisions for the users.  Give them all the
choices possible and let them choose.

                                          Brian
                                 ( bcwhite@verisim.com )

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