Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on April 13, 2007 11:15 PM
I've been using Debian for nine years, and testing for the past seven. The problems I've had with Debian of late come directly from the philosophy of "allowing experts to break it"--specifically the packagers.
My standards of purity are not as stringent as the Debian team. I never wanted Iceweasel; I'd rather keep Firefox. But instead of putting Firefox in non-free, they pulled a bait and switch. Now upgrading Firefox gives you Iceweasel instead, with no warnings. It's not the first time something like this has happened, but at the moment it's the most egregious.
I love free software. As a desktop user, I also want the option of using non-free or "merely" open source software. You can't sacrifice user freedom for the cause.
Perhaps the DFSG are too narrow, and need to open up a little, become more like the Perl Artistic License guidelines. Or perhaps the core developers are too narrow, and need to act less like the Supreme Court. I've stopped caring because I'm just a user now--or vice-versa.
It seems inevitable that I'm going to have to finally go looking for another, otherwise Debianish, distro: free as in speech<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/or/ as in beer, but free from idealogical purity.
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I want Debian to live, but...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 13, 2007 11:15 PMMy standards of purity are not as stringent as the Debian team. I never wanted Iceweasel; I'd rather keep Firefox. But instead of putting Firefox in non-free, they pulled a bait and switch. Now upgrading Firefox gives you Iceweasel instead, with no warnings. It's not the first time something like this has happened, but at the moment it's the most egregious.
I love free software. As a desktop user, I also want the option of using non-free or "merely" open source software. You can't sacrifice user freedom for the cause.
Perhaps the DFSG are too narrow, and need to open up a little, become more like the Perl Artistic License guidelines. Or perhaps the core developers are too narrow, and need to act less like the Supreme Court. I've stopped caring because I'm just a user now--or vice-versa.
It seems inevitable that I'm going to have to finally go looking for another, otherwise Debianish, distro: free as in speech<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/or/ as in beer, but free from idealogical purity.
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