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

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 20:31 +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    Java is an excellent example of the good work Debian does to
>    advance free software IMHO.
> 
> It is a good example of what Debian does to _not_ advance free
> software.  It includes it, when there is a 100% free software
> replacemnt.  It is still in Debian, and will probobly be for a long
> time.

Alfred, this just isn't correct.

First, there is _no_ 100% replacement for Java. Go to
http://packages.debian.org/, and ask it for a list of any package with
'Java' in the description located in the 'contrib' section. 

Every single package it returns is Free Software. It's put in contrib
because it does *not* work with any Free Software Java. These are
applications that have been trapped by proprietary Java. You should read
this page, it explains the problem:

	http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

Then go and look at the previous links I sent, and see the amount of
work that Debian is doing to free these packages: to find replacements
for libraries like Swing, or to get them to compile with free Java. Or
at the CDBS packaging work they do to ensure every Java package can work
cleanly with a Free VM, even if it was designed for Sun Java.

Look at the list of packages that Debian has freed from the Java trap.
Are you _seriously_ telling me with all that, that Debian does not
advance free software in this area?

Cheers,

Alex.