[NTLUG:Discuss] Debian and proposed change to social contract: clarification?

[Richard Cobbe]

Lo, on Friday, October 13, Dan Griswold did write:

> Richard et al.,
> 
> I would add these points to what has already been said:
> 
> 1) Right now, the proposal to remove non-free is really a formal
>    proposal that must be voted on by the Debian community, and that
>    vote has not yet taken place. Indeed, there is some debate over
>    whether the proposal needs to be resubmitted, as technically it has
>    expired.

Yeah, I got that.  I just don't want to find myself in the position of
having switched distributions, only to find that some of the software that
I use on a semi-regular basis is no longer (conveniently) available.

> 2) As Jonathan suggested, lots of stuff in non-free could remain
                                                      ~~~~~
>    available from other sources, if it were in fact no longer to be
>    available on the debian mirrors. Package maintainers wouldn't
>    necessarily stop building debs.

Right.  It's just that "could" that worries me---nobody's been able to
point me to something which says definitely, "these packages will continue
to be available, on the following (non-Debian.org sites)."

Obviously, I can always download the source and compile it myself (or grab
netscape from netscape.com, or whatever), but I'd like to be able to keep
this stuff in sync with the packaging system.  That is what it's there for,
after all.

> 3) I don't have a whole lot from non-free on my system. vrms reports
>    the following:
> 
> <quote>
>          Non-free packages installed on dgrismac.home.org
> 
> freefont                  Freeware font selection for X11
> mpg123                    MPEG layer 1/2/3 audio player
> navigator-base-475        Navigator base support for version 4.75
> navigator-nethelp-475     Navigator online help for version 4.75
> navigator-smotif-475      Netscape Navigator 4.75 (static Motif)
> netscape-base-475         4.75 base support for netscape
> netscape-java-475         Netscape Java support for version 4.75
> tnt                       An AIM client for EMACS.
> unzip                     De-archiver for .zip files
> xanim                     Plays multimedia files (animations, pictures ...
> xephem                    An interactive astronomical ephemeris for X.
> 
> </quote>
> 
> Of the above, I really only use netscape (and friends), mpg123, and
> xephem.

Right.  I took a look at the list of packages in non-free this morning.
Though the bulk of the software is unnecessary for me, there is some stuff
in there I'd be hard-pressed to do without: netscape & xanim, obviously,
since there aren't (yet) any alternatives.  XV would be nice, as would
scsh.

Maybe in a year or so when Mozilla is Ready For Prime-Time (TM).

Richard