[Fsf-Debian] few arguments to FSF

[Adam Bolte]

> On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 09:05:26AM +1000, Karl Goetz wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 10:56:27PM +1000, Dmitry Smirnov wrote:

> > > However let's not forget about some multimedia content
> > > there which is not necessarily evil but merely a non-fit for strict 'main'
> > > criteria.

> > Heck, if we can get the Debian distribution good enough to make forks
> > like gNewSense practically redundant, perhaps contributors to those
> > projects might like to instead work on maintaining such a repository?
> 
> Not sure i follow - people who want to use free software so much they
> contribute to an fsf free distro will be very unlikely to start working on a
> nonfree repo.

Not everybody's definition of free software is exactly the same. FSF free !=
DFSG free.

My understanding is that Dmitry was referring to free software that is thought
to potentially infringe on patents or otherwise not be considered free by the
DFSG. This is why I also referred to the GFDL documentation which would be a
similar situation - it is considered free by the FSF yet excluded from main.
If other distributions use the FSF definition and would normally include such
items, they might perhaps choose to make a Debian repository instead to do
just that. It would be a lot less effort than maintaining an entire
distribution fork, if they felt so inclined.

If my interpretation of what Dmitry was saying is wrong, and he was actually
wishing for the inclusion of proprietary codecs, I would absolutely be against
that idea.

-Adam
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