[IAEP] squeak/etoys accepted into Debian main

[Jonas Smedegaard]

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On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 08:24:56PM -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>Holger Levsen wrote:
>> On Friday 07 November 2008 19:45, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>> > The Squeak image "Etoys" (the only one currently packaged 
>> > officially for Debian) is in "non-free" due to ftpmasters judging 
>> > it not possible for the security team to maintain throughout the 
>> > (multiple year long) lifespan of a Debian release.
>> 
>> IIRC/IIUC this is one aspect why the ftpmasters didnt accept it in 
>> main. More generally said, (IIRC) it's because the impossibility to 
>> bootstrap etoys.
>
>Is the subject correct? I mean I know we are talking about a directory 
>called "non-free" but is there anyone out there that after what has 
>been said still doesn't accept etoys as Free Software? It seems to me 
>that the discussion has moved on to the issue of etoys being "unsafe" 
>instead. It is just that Debian doesn't have an "unsafe" directory.

You are perfectly right. Subject changed.

[a couple of good and clearly summarized observations snipped]


>> So my planned approach to get it into main in the long run, is to 
>> start a general discussion in Debian about this kind of software, 
>> thus stopping to special case squeak.
>
>That supposes the people involved are not fully informed and might 
>change their opinions given more facts, but as Jonas Smedegaard wrote 
>this is probably not be the case. I probably shouldn't be adding 
>gasoline to the fire, but the fact is that the current plan for Squeak 
>5 will give us something far more alien than what you have seen so far 
>- http://netjam.org/spoon/naiad

Debian have had long and heated debates in the past about wether or not 
to treat firmware as software or not. And graphics, and so on...

As I read it, Holger intends to attempt initiating a similar (but *not* 
equal!) discussion about software development models. On "preferred 
expression of source". So a more general approach, rather than specific 
to current Squeak/Etoys.

I welcome such debate - and see it as crucial for widening the 
perspectives of the Debian community, and by that hopefully of the Linux 
community at large.


>I will confess that I don't personally care much about getting Squeak 
>into any Linux distribution. Don't get me wrong - I love Debian, 
>Ubuntu, Slackware, Red Hat, Gentoo and all the rest and have used them 
>all myself. But consider the following groups of people:
>
>- children and teachers not familiar with Linux. For these the only 
>practical options are either having it pre-installed like on the XO or 
>getting the web plugin version from squeakland.org. Having it be just 
>an apt-get away doesn't help these people.

You want to bake a cake, and do not mind that the toppings are not 
available at the local supermarket.

But same logic applies for many levels of the whole composition, and you 
end up "going shopping all over town" to get all the ingredients needed.

That's how I got fed up with Windows and Macintosh: I slowly found 
exactly which optimal tools I wanted on a system, and even though all of 
them were free to use (i.e. Shareware, this was before I learned about 
FLOSS), I needed to go out and download each and every piece for each 
and every machine that I configured for myself, friends and family.

Distributions are about automating the system composition and 
installation hell.

The XOs use a distribution system. In fact they use a couple layered on 
top of each other.

If teachers and children don't care, then the reason is simply that they 
got someone else to do that boring (and perhaps complex) task for them. 
It still needs doing. I suspect the same applies to you (Edubuntu is a 
distribution too!).


>As you pointed out, nothing at all needs to be done about Squeak to get 
>Sugar into any Linux since Sugar doesn't depend on Squeak in any way. 
>So the issue is making Sugar the same on all platforms by having the 
>same set of pre-installed stuff, right?

Generalizing the build routines makes the packaging task much easier. 
But it does not remove the need for (or convenience of) distributions.


>Let me give you an example of what I mean by results vs effort - the 
>original Squeak License had three things that bothered different groups 
>of people. One of these was the export clause that didn't allow Squeak 
>to be shipped to countries like Cuba. Now that the three issues have 
>been fixed (at a very high cost in terms of effort diverted from 
>development) will we see happy Cuban children playing with eToys on 
>their XOs? If not then all we have achieved was making a tiny group of 
>very vocal people happy that a certain phrase was removed from some 
>text. Nothing else was changed.

When I use Debian, I can rest assured that all 20.000+ packages of 
potentially differently licensed software all are licensed within the 
boundaries of the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" (DFSG).

If you are only ever interested in a single or a few pieces of software, 
then you might be capable of reading, analyzing and resolving if both 
each individual license and the combination of using them together for 
your specific purposes are legal.

But you do *not* use a fes pieces of software. Even with a 
"single-pieced" operating system like Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS 
X, you are in reality dealing with thousands of pieces differently 
licensed - you simply did not deal with it yourself.


That is what distribution is about: Passing on the task of "dealing" 
with the individual pieces of software to someone else, and consider it 
as a single whole.


So no, I disagree that the tiresome task of getting rid of 3 "silly" 
clauses was irrelevant. The alternative to getting rid of them would be 
to relax the restrictions in same 3 "silly" areas for the remaining 
thousands of pieces that your distribution consist of.

Or, if you like, passing it on to each individual to read, interpret and 
resolve if the license of that one piece is suitable for him or her. 
Which we both know is a humongous task for average users - it is a joke: 
we all just close our eyes and hope that all is good, when presented 
with click-through licenses. Causing our social networking to be owned 
by Facebook, and our surfing habits to be owned by Google.


  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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