commercial != non-free software

[Matthew East]

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* Matt Zimmerman:
> On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 09:17:36AM +0100, Matthew East wrote:
>> * Eric Feliksik:
>>> While it is interesting that these packages can be provided by
>>> Canonical, I think the word "commercial" is misplaced here.  We all know
>>> free software can be commercial software (for many people Ubuntu itself
>>> is commercial, or some of the packages are), and non-free software can
>>> even be non-commercial. When Ubuntu aims to promote free software, it's
>>> important not to create this confusion.
>> Agreed. For me it's not really a point of principle as one of
>> convenience, the normal meaning of "commercial" for people is that they
>> will have to pay for the software. Since they don't have to pay for the
>> software in dapper-commercial, it is not an appropriate name.
> 
> While it may or may not be feasible to change the name of the repository at
> this time, I'd be interested to hear suggestions for meaningful, intuitive
> names which aren't defined as the opposite of something else.
> 
> "proprietary" is the closest that comes to mind.

I think proprietary is the right word. But the one thing I would add is
that the existing Ubuntu repositories (or is it channels, components,
argh!) have neutral names which don't necessarily reflect the licensing
of the content (multiverse). So I think as long as the name is either
appropriately descriptive or neutral, it doesn't matter. The problem is
only where the name is descriptive but inappropriate.

Matt
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