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: contrib/non-free policy

> Alex Yukhimets <aqy6633@is5.nyu.edu> writes:
> 
> 
> > First of all, let's our policy be to place (port) as much as possible
> > of this not_free software into the distribution to give user _choice_.
> > ...
> > Let's not hesitate to put application in whatever from allowed - binary
> > only, unmodified source only, installer, etc. Use every possible special
> > agreement of copiright holders with Debian, etc.
> 
> >From reading your posts, I think you must have a vision for a
> different kind of distribution than the one Debian intends to be.
> Debian is dedicated to *free software*, as we recently defined it,
> first and foremost.  The fact that we support stuff that's not free is
> just an added bonus[1], but it is *not* the primary focus.  I think I
> speak for many of the developers when I say that if that focus ends up
> making Debian second in popularity to other distributions, then so be
> it.  (It's no accident that we are currently endorsed by the Free
> Software Foundation.)
> 
> One could easily start creating a distribution that is willing to
> incorporate any software regardless of its distribution policies
> (dealing with NDA's, negotiating distribution specific licenses, etc.)
> in order to accumulate the largest collection of software, and I
> believe you could even base it on Debian, but it would not *be*
> Debian.

Why not? If you treat Debian as FSG compliant main distribution, it will
stay this way. I have to admit that you persuaded me in the importance of
that. And it _is_ and _will_ be the primary focus of Debian.
Surely someone else can use Debian as a base for the distribution I
described. But it would be much easier to do within the infrastracture
of Debian itself. Just realize, that the only thing I propose is to change
_slightly_ our policy on what should be placed in semi-supported area.
The gain of that would be much improved general attraction to Debian as
both providing _complete_ free Linux system AND versatility of not_free
add-ons for the users who might need that. It will make Debian even _more_
free 'cause those users will get distribution of near-commercial quality
by free ftp download.

I don't think it is against the Debain goals.

Thank you.

Alex Y. 

> 
> [1] I, of course, don't think we should go out of our way to make
> things difficult for software that's not free, but we haven't done
> that in general, and we even affirm that we won't in the future in the
> new guidelines.  However, I do think it's important to maintain the
> main=free/non-main=not-free distinction.
>
> -- 
> Rob
-- 
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 |      _ 7           |            Alexander Yukhimets            |
  \    (")            |       http://pages.nyu.edu/~aqy6633/      |
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