[Fsf-Debian] few arguments to FSF

[Dmitry Smirnov]

On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 23:37:23 Adam Bolte wrote:
> 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.

No, nothing of that sort of course. Personally I can do even without 
proprietary video drivers and I do not regard codecs as essential needs.

However my point was that Debian is tremendously useful as "universal 
operating system" which I could use on every single computer I had access to 
both at home and work over the last decade. Occasionally some of them need 
proprietary network drivers and if we won't be able to install Debian to such 
systems then as a project we suffer a big loss in usability and proliferation 
of Debian.
I'd very much like to use only free drivers but I understand that limiting 
Debian usability in that regards would cause more harm than good because as a 
result of such decision more users will resort to less free operating systems.

I think we have a perfect balance when proprietary drivers are available from 
non-free and not included to official installation disks.
This raise awareness of problem with such drivers while allow system 
installation.

Perhaps we only need to clean our non-free from things that are truly both 
evil and unnecessary without going too far into crusade so some misfits for 
high DFSG standards as documentation could have a chance to survive.

Regards,
Dmitry.