[yavor at doganov.org: Re: Defining Free Software Business]

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 20:03 +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> if you have non-free software you do not use it or support it,
> but write a replacement.  Debian is doing nothing in the vicinity of
> that.  There is a free Java suit that the GNU project has developed,
> yet for some odd reason, Debian feels it wise to include the Sun Java
> suit.

I wasn't going to post again, but I do wish you had read some of the
links I'd posted previously. As an example, this is what Debian is doing
for Free Java:

	http://wiki.debian.org/Java/AlreadyMovedToMain

Each one of those packages was something which was placed in contrib or
non-free, and relied on some aspect of Java which did not work with a
free Java like kaffe. Each one of those has been rescued from the Java
trap. I don't think it's fair for you to characterise Debian as "doing
nothing in the vicinity [of writing a replacement]".

In my previous e-mail, I showed a package listing of non-free which
showed exactly why each package is in non-free, and what Debian is doing
to make the package Free Software or replace it. Java is an excellent
example of the good work Debian does to advance free software IMHO.

Cheers,

Alex.