Non-free packages

rehcra · 2004-10-11 07:36:34

I'm really against non-free packages. I would love if Arch linux removed all the dependecies on this packages (like mplayers on windows codecs).
Moreover, I would appreciate to move all closed-source packages to separate repository (because we don't compile them).

zeppelin · 2004-10-11 08:30:39

I agree with you. Pacman recently introduced a License Field. Of course I bet most of the packages don't have it, nor their PKGBUILDs that are updated. If that is true in the near future though, then we don't need a seperate repo, but a way of seperating the good licenses from the slavely licenses [this seperation could come from a seperate repo {debian inspired}]

moreover, we need virtual rms being hacked for pacman's package system

Haakon · 2004-10-11 14:57:09

Hear, hear. If all package maintainers could add the License field to their PKGBUILDs, and we agreed on a standard set of denotations for the licenses (so that we avoid one saying "GPL" and another saying "GNU-GPL" and such), pacman.conf could get a new "LicenseMask" field that would include licenses you don't like. Pacman would then disregard these packages. Or something. I heard the gentoo folks are planning something like that.

A more simplistic (and therefore more Arch-friendly) solution would be to move all the nonfree packages into a seperate "nonfree" repository. The problem with this is that people have their own opinions about what constitute "free". Some people I know refuse to use BSD licensed programs (don't ask me), and some think the MPL is too restrictive, for example.

Freedom awareness is a good thing!

Dusty · 2004-10-11 16:33:41

There is the fact that lots of users would still be using Debian except they wanted simpler access to these packages.

I suppose this discussion should go in the devland article, it comes up periodically.

Dusty

Haakon · 2004-10-11 23:13:14

Dusty wrote:

There is the fact that lots of users would still be using Debian except they wanted simpler access to these packages.

It doesn't have to be hard to get the packages. The non-free repository could even be enabled by default, and those who wanted to could disable it as easily as any other repo.

LavaPunk · 2004-10-11 23:46:20

I'm not in favor of creating any more repositories. That said I'd instead support using the license section of each pkgbuild to choose. I suspect this would be quite a bit of work to implement though, as each pkgbuild would have to be modified, and pacman itself would have to implement a new feature.
Nice idea which I am sure some people would use.

kritoke · 2004-10-16 13:54:21

Is there any real standard in how we are to spell/capitalize the licenses in our PKGBUILDs?

Kritoke

punkrockguy318 · 2004-10-16 14:33:25

The license field isn't supposed to be used yet. The devel's haven't decided what they want to use it for. It could be a URL pointing to the license, or it could be a string. Once the devels decide it will be used in packages.

Haakon · 2004-10-16 18:48:36

I see. I'd be in favor of a standardized set of license names. There aren't that many licenses, and if some program has some weird license, a new designation would be registered for it.

URLs are fragile, they change over time. At best we could standardize on one URL per license, but what if the license text moves and the URL changes? To mend this problem, the URLs could point to archlinux.org or somewhere else in control of the devels.

What's important for me is not only to let the license field show the license to the user doing a -Qi or equivalent, but also allow third-party tools to use the field for something useful. So what's in the field has to be a stable designation for the license.

Just my .2 Norwegian kroners.

LB06 · 2004-10-16 20:18:06

What is wrong with nonfree packages? I am an advocate of a more pragmatic approach. As a user, I want to be able to just watch videos that are encoded with a nonfree codec. I don care how thay are encoded, as long as they just work. People who use packages expect things compiled with sensible defaults. Not being able to watch a movie because of a ideologic issue is NOT a sensible default imo.

zeppelin · 2004-10-16 21:28:24

LB06 wrote:

What is wrong with nonfree packages?

I'm going to be hard on you, because you first ask and then reply yourself! THEN WHY TF you ask?
anyways..

the fact that they are not free as FSF and OSI wants defines it. That is what is wrong my friend.

yes I know why the f**k should you care?
DO NOT F**ING care then

people write for people who think like you [all think at first. I was thinking the same way]
BUT I F**KING read: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/why-free.html and others

if you don't want to read that because these guys sound communists to you, then vote for Bush and f**king leave us alone with your DVD and all that crap

also google DRM problems and you'll plenty of communists complaining without a reason.
but what the hell? enjoy your DVD man. don't worry about anything that (you think that) doesn't affect you

Dusty · 2004-10-16 21:56:38

I've read the article. I have to say that people that support their arguments with starred out bad language are not terribly persuasive.

My carefully calculated and not terribly humble opinion on this topic is freedom of choice. Saying that people cannot use software because it is not freely distributed is JUST AS BAD as saying that people cannot choose to freely distribute software.

In other words, if you choose to force your ****ing policies on me, I will ****ing fight you back.

You have every right to use only free software. You can limit yourself to only GPL software. I couldn't care less. But if you choose to limit me to only free or open source or GPL software, then I will think as lowly of you as I do of the guy that wants to limit me to software licensed under the Microsoft EULA.

Now, then, really, is this issue important to using Arch? there aren't a lot of non-free packages in Arch, and most of them are not generally installed as dependencies. You guys are big boys now or you wouldn't be able to use Arch. I think you are fully capable of checking the dependency list every time you install to ensure it doesn't include flash, Java, or the others.

We ARE standardizing the license field. There has been some discussion of it, things will happen eventually.

I personally make it a policy to install *programs* that I support, regardless of the license. There are a few open source projects that I do not believe in, just as there are many proprietary products that I don't believe in. For example, I believe that supporting .Net on Linux is detrimental to the hacker culture. The mono project is open source (GPL, I believe?). Maybe we should have a separate repository for open source projects that may harm the very freedom they are licensed under too? Another example: I believe that gaming is a complete waste of time, life, and thoughts. Should we make a separate repository for games so I don't accidentally install one?

Sure, there are many users out there that disagree with me on both mono and gaming. But there are many users that disagree with you on non-free software. I'll take responsibility for not installing the applications I don't support. What will you do?

Dusty

aCoder · 2004-10-16 22:06:42

I like the way you put that, Dusty.

If anyone cares what my opinion is on the matter, see above, and note that I happen to like gaming, and I am quite neutral on mono.

Mith · 2004-10-16 22:12:30

Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives.

That made me laugh.. I lose control b/c I use something [which I probably just want to use and not alter/rewrite/hype up] that is not free?
@Zeppelin
I think you should relax a little m8!
My point is.. you can go and harass all day long but it won't change one bit in today's society.. Complaining isn't helping either.. Start programming and just copy all the nice features that you see created by the black box.
I am not saying that I wouldn't love to have this free ideal world but I am a bit too realistic for that :evil:
just one sidenote.. you need money in this world to keep you free from the troubles that keep you from feeling free and independent.. how you get money? well sell your services, like sell your programming skill. If everyone can just copy your work than why would anyone pay for it?
[ again I am not in favor of all this copyright and "no don't you dare making a copy of our cd!" crap. It's just pressed upon us and without a revolution of some kind.. you know where I'm going.. ]

Dusty · 2004-10-16 22:19:40

Mith wrote:

If everyone can just copy your work than why would anyone pay for it?

Lots of people get paid to program open source. Many of the more rapidly developed open source projects have paid programmers. Linus is paid now, Mozilla pays people, OpenOffice devs are paid, I believe ASF pays some of their developers (not certain), Red Hat pays people to backport security fixes, IBM is paying open source developers... more people are getting paid to develop open source code as it becomes more popular, not less.

Dusty

Mith · 2004-10-16 22:35:03

just so I understand it correct.
Where for example does mozilla take the money from? I mean companys like IBM make money selling their products (be it open whatever or not) and that's the reason why they can pay for open source programmers..

I think our basic problem here is money.. always has been in some form or the other and probably will be for quite a while.. let's just hope we live until the star-trek-society[ I can't remember exactly.. in the movie 1st contact it was explained a bit iirc.. something like work for a good purpose; knowledge as profit etc...] takes over the world *g*

sarah31 · 2004-10-16 23:54:13

i couldn't care less what license software has i understand the variety of reasons the licenses exist and i can live with that. i may not like some of the business tactics of some software developer companies but i usually tend not to use those brands.

if i or anyone wants to use a certain piece of software then that is their choice. some little trash talker using profanity and forcing us to submit to their POV and use only one type of software sounds alot to me like the worst kind of hypocracy. i haven't had one single windows or mac user try to force me to use their product. i have had businesses force me to use a specific OS or software but if it means employment or welfare i choose employment.

if all you "freedom of choice" types really don't care then you would not give two shits what anyone else used. your choice is youyr choice and you have no control of anyone elses personal choices. freedom of choice is being able to choose something and not be sworn at by some one.

i also personally despise anyone who would class me in a group of people that i have a very strong dislike for (ie. because i buy closed source software i am a supporter of bush). how a license is manipulated is often very different from why it was created in the first place. people should grow up and realize this. I believe in copyright for many reasons but i get annoyed when lobbyists, businesses, or whoever try and manipulate such things for their betterment and at a far higher cost in other ways.

the time is tough for those trying to profit from an idea they had or piece of art they made. close licenses used to provide them some sort of protection and guarntee that they would continue to profit for their work effort. computers and such is wreaking havoc on this and many bad movements have been made to close the loopholes. but the fact remains that our society permits one to profit from their brainchilds and work that goes into them.

closed licenses have not hurt creation and advancement in the past and will not in the future. but goverments and big business should be very careful that changes they try to make are for the betterment of all and not just one person or business friend.

open source communities should remember that the idea of freedom is important wheter one uses free source or not. no one should be dictating how another should run their life.

in the end most of the biggest open source champions i know just want something for nothing. they continue to take from the open source community and rarely give anything back .... especially if they ry and force their views on someone.

s

Haakon · 2004-10-16 23:55:15

Mith wrote:

just so I understand it correct.
Where for example does mozilla take the money from?

To quote Wikipedia:

Funding for the foundation comes from donations from corporations and individuals. As well as AOL's initial $2 million donation, Mitch Kapor gave $300,000 to the organization at its launch.

Mozilla is "software in the public interest" -- plenty of individuals want to see Mozilla succeed, and these people can donate money. Plenty of corporations have stakes in Mozilla's success, and for these, there's a corporate contributions program. And finally, some individuals enjoy coding, or want to scratch their particular itch, so they contribute code.

A lot of the larger projects (including KDE, GNOME, Apache etc) also use this exact model for fund raising. Other projects are almost entirely developed by volunteers (ArchLinux and many others), while others are almost entirely funded by enthusiast individual users (like Freenet, which hires one programmer full-time paid exclusively by users of the software).

Mith wrote:

I mean companys like IBM make money selling their products (be it open whatever or not) and that's the reason why they can pay for open source programmers..

IBM is primarily a "solutions" company; they sell complete solutions with servers and integrated software and all the works. For them, it's exclusively an advantage that the software part is free software -- not only does the cost decline, but the quality rises, the software lifetime increases, and as a bonus it's good PR and good corporate karma. So they don't do free software because they think "hey, whatever, might as well" (or as you put it, "open whatever or not"), but because it's a concrete competitive asset.

Mith wrote:

I think our basic problem here is money..

As you can see, free software can be developed without the exclusion of financial reward. Don't buy into the anti-free software rhetoric that keeps repeating "but who will write free software?" This rhetoric makes many people see problems where there are none.

Free software adds to the sum of knowledge in the world, and only good can come of this. Businesses want innovation, and freedom of information is an excellent driver for this.

fuse · 2004-10-17 01:02:08

ABS!

aCoder · 2004-10-17 03:50:18

Well, this seems pretty relevant, in case anyone's interested...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3739894.stm

Especially:

"We are doing this not only because other people will have better ideas than we will, but what better way to choose something that could change the world than for asking for public submissions.
"The outcome would be owned by the world and the public," said Mr Clark.

Mith · 2004-10-17 09:15:37

aCoder wrote:

Well, this seems pretty relevant, in case anyone's interested...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3739894.stm

Very interesting link!
So basically that is saying to combine efforts to come up with something usefull and innovative. Pretty good idea I think! Let's just all calm down again and chill out with or without non-free packages
@ Hakoon
I feel analyzed now

LB06 · 2004-10-17 10:10:59

zeppelin wrote:

LB06 wrote:
What is wrong with nonfree packages?
I'm going to be hard on you, because you first ask and then reply yourself! THEN WHY TF you ask?
anyways..
the fact that they are not free as FSF and OSI wants defines it. That is what is wrong my friend.
yes I know why the f**k should you care?
DO NOT F**ING care then
people write for people who think like you [all think at first. I was thinking the same way]
BUT I F**KING read: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/why-free.html and others
if you don't want to read that because these guys sound communists to you, then vote for Bush and f**king leave us alone with your DVD and all that crap
also google DRM problems and you'll plenty of communists complaining without a reason.
but what the hell? enjoy your DVD man. don't worry about anything that (you think that) doesn't affect you

Geez please chill dude.

1. I'm not for the US. I you had looked more closely you would have noticed I'm from the Netherlands and as a European Citizen I like Bush as less as you do.

2. In my opinion free also means individual freedom, which allows me to choose what packages I want to install and for what reasons and to express my opinion about it.

So please be not so rude next time. I didn't expect you to be so narrow minded.

xerxes2 · 2004-10-17 16:34:28

I back Zeppelin on this matter.
Most people don't think/care about what they are using for soft/hardware.
Majority isn't always right.
Corporations are clearly just after lots of money, they have to be watched all the time.

rehcra · 2004-10-17 17:21:03

I completely agree with zeppelin on this matter.

Saying that there's nothing wrong with closed-source software is equal to saying that there's nothing wrong with slavery. You say that:
We wrote this software, so there's nothing wrong with earning money for this.
or
You can always write software yourself and copy features from closed source software. (software patents!)

This is so similar to:
I payed for this slave so he's mine and there is nothing wrong with taking benefit from his work.
or
A slave can always buy himself out.

I'm not for completely banning closed software. But I do thing there is something wrong with closed software (and those who write it). It would be best to force software companies to release their source code let's say after 10 years.

In the meantime, we should not force Arch users to install closed source packages by adding dependencies of free software on them. You say
User can always recompile packages with ABS if she wishes not to include these closed-source dependecies.
But we could also say that
User can always recompile packages with ABS if she wishes to include these closed-source dependecies.

Dusty · 2004-10-17 17:56:32

rehcra wrote:

I completely agree with zeppelin on this matter.

Unfortunately, you've already proven a lack of any ability that might even resemble the ability to think.

Saying that there's nothing wrong with closed-source software is equal to saying that there's nothing wrong with slavery.

This is the dumbest argument... totally backwards. The people that make closed source software get paid to do it. If somebody gets paid lots of money to create a new type of missile by the US government and then the government goes and uses that missile, who's fault is it? Was it slave labour?

If somebody writes software for free and you go and use it without doing anything in repayment, (such as helping the community -- that's what we open source developers expect, and its something you are very poorly suited for) is that not more like slave labour than if you pay for it? If you can't help the community with intelligent help (due, usually, to a lack of the commodity in question), send your donations.

Dusty

Arch Linux

#1 2004-10-11 07:36:34

Non-free packages

#2 2004-10-11 08:30:39

Re: Non-free packages

#3 2004-10-11 14:57:09

Re: Non-free packages

#4 2004-10-11 16:33:41

Re: Non-free packages

#5 2004-10-11 23:13:14

Re: Non-free packages

#6 2004-10-11 23:46:20

Re: Non-free packages

#7 2004-10-16 13:54:21

Re: Non-free packages

#8 2004-10-16 14:33:25

Re: Non-free packages

#9 2004-10-16 18:48:36

Re: Non-free packages

#10 2004-10-16 20:18:06

Re: Non-free packages

#11 2004-10-16 21:28:24

Re: Non-free packages

#12 2004-10-16 21:56:38

Re: Non-free packages

#13 2004-10-16 22:06:42

Re: Non-free packages

#14 2004-10-16 22:12:30

Re: Non-free packages

#15 2004-10-16 22:19:40

Re: Non-free packages

#16 2004-10-16 22:35:03

Re: Non-free packages

#17 2004-10-16 23:54:13

Re: Non-free packages

#18 2004-10-16 23:55:15

Re: Non-free packages

#19 2004-10-17 01:02:08

Re: Non-free packages

#20 2004-10-17 03:50:18

Re: Non-free packages

#21 2004-10-17 09:15:37

Re: Non-free packages

#22 2004-10-17 10:10:59

Re: Non-free packages

#23 2004-10-17 16:34:28

Re: Non-free packages

#24 2004-10-17 17:21:03

Re: Non-free packages

#25 2004-10-17 17:56:32

Re: Non-free packages

Board footer