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: Debian needs you

On Wed, 5 Nov 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:

> My personal opinion is that the 100% free nature of the software is an
> essential part of the compensation of the volunteers. Without it, they
> would not feel as good about their work, and they would be less likely
> to volunteer.

I see things more pragmatic. I debianize things in order to have them run
on our computer systems on Campus or some toys for me. I want others to
contribute to the capability on our servers and we in turn contribute to
the Debian distribution things that are important to us. This is a give
and take between people interested in sharing the work done on software.
The GPL essentially ensures that our investment in free software stays
free. If someone wants to contribute software that is using a different
license then they are welcome as long as we can use it. The time 
investment that we will make in commercial software generally will be
not as high as in free software but that is depending on the usefulness of
the software so offered. A part of our system is using commercial software
due to the unavailability of comparable free software products.

I think most Debian developers run netscape which is a commercial product.
And the usability here clearly outweighs any license considerations.

> I think this is the primary reason there are no "moderate" candidates.
> The moderates don't have as strong an incentive to work three hours per
> day for Debian, the hard-line free software people do.

The moderates might have an interest to keep things moderate and keep
Debian in good terms with the rest of the world. Radicalization of Debian
results in isolation from the rest of the Linux community. I am rather
concerned about the current candidate for Project Leader and I am happy
that there is no third so far.

> To use myself for an example, building free software for everyone is
> its own reward. If I felt that I was using my spare time to promote
> someone else's commercial product that had no free incarnation, I'd
> feel much worse, and would probably find something else to do.

Back the KDE situation: most of KDE is GPL except for that QT issue.
Punishing KDE for QT is not good. Help them to find a replacement for QT
rather than being negative about KDE.


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