On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 06:53:26PM -0600, T.J. Duchene wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Dec 2014 21:16:40 -0300
> hellekin <hellekin@???> wrote:
>
>
> Someone mentioned dropping support for contrib and
> > non-free. I would support that.
>
> With respect, I would not advocate such an approach without more
> information as to what Devuan would do with the software in those
> areas.
>
> Dropping Debian's contrib and non-free sections completely would render
> a number of real world use cases, such as flash, video/audio
> codecs, and a large number of drivers useless because they have no
> firmware support.

Dropping contrib and non-free would immediately consign Devuan to
irrelevance. Non-free firmware is needed for too much hardware.
Actual need for non-free *programs* is limited today; ironically
if it were not for current views on firmware, it would probably
have ceased to exist of its own accord.

When considering the issue, there is a distinction to be made
between philosophical purity and pragmatism. If you want to use
main alone and eschew contrib and non-free, you already have that
choice. When Debian voted on this a few years back, it seemed that
before the vote that the hardliners would win and the vote would be
overwhelmingly in favour of dropping it, based on the discussions.
It turned out to be the opposite, and that the project decided that
the pragmatic solution was what served their users needs. And I was
one of the people who agreed with the hardline view; but when it
came to voting, I realised this served my political views but not
actual end users, and voted accordingly.

Non-free stuff isn't ideal, and we would almost all be happy to be
able to drop it. But we're not in an ideal situation, and for the
moment it serves a purpose. Dropping non-free doesn't solve the
underlying problems, it just moves them elsewhere. Essentially, it
makes the life of end users more difficult for no good reason.
Given that the option to not use contrib and non-free already
exists, the act of banning is to force this hardline view of the
world on everyone whether they agree with it or not, and that's a
bit selfish. And even if they agree (which I do), I still have to
choose between having working graphics and networking, or not.
Ultimately I need to use the computer for doing stuff, and they
are required even though I dislike them.

Dropping contrib and non-free in a derivative would have the same
benefits as dropping it in Devuan, but without the downside of
forcing it upon everyone unconditionally.


Regards,
Roger

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