Proposal - non-free software removal
Pursuant to Appendix A of the Debian Constitution and the guidelines offered
at http://www.debian.org/vote/howto_proposal, I hereby offer the following
draft proposal as the beginning of a General Resolution process to decide
this issue.
Sponsors should reply to this message. According to the guidelines, all
other discussion is to occur in debian-devel, and I will start a thread
there with some prelminary analyses of this proposal.
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Resolved:
A. That the non-free areas be removed from all non-released Debian
archives, such as "unstable" and "testing". All packages placed in a
non-free area in accordance with the definition in Policy section
2.1.4 must be removed from the Distribution and archives, subject to
the restrictions in section B. The introduction or re-introduction
into the Debian Distribution or the Debian archives of any package
meeting the non-free definition in Policy section 2.1.4, or failing
the Debian Free Software Guidelines, shall be forbidden.
B. That nothing in this Resolution shall mandate the removal of non-free
software from historic Debian archives nor from the current stable
archive. The archive maintainers, release maintainers, or other
responsible parties under the Debian Constitution shall decide the
final disposition of the non-free software in historic and current
stable areas.
C. That nothing in this Resolution shall mandate the removal of
"contrib" sections from any archive. The archive maintainers, release
maintainers, or other responsible parties under the Debian
Constitution shall decide the disposition of contrib sections, and may
re-visit their decision at any later date, subject to the normal
procedures governing such decisions.
D. That the maintainer of the Debian Policy Manual, or an appointee of
the Debian Project Leader, be directed to update that manual
respective of the changes to the Project and general Project policy
detailed in this Resolution.
E. That the maintainers of the Debian archives and website, or an
appointee of the Debian Project Leader, be directed to implement the
changes to the Debian archives and website to reflect the changes to
Debian enacted by this Resolution.
F. That a new version of the Debian Social Contract with the Free
Software Community be released, with the same content as the
existing version, save for the following amendments:
1. The title of Section 5 shall be modified to read: "We will
support users of our system who develop or run non-free software."
2. The text of Section 5 be modified to read: "We acknowledge that
some of our users require the use of programs that don't conform to
the Debian Free Software Guidelines. While we will not distribute
such software itself, we will take steps wherever technically
feasible to ensure compatibility with these programs."
G. That the public will be advised of the date, purpose, and nature of
the new Debian Social Contract as mandated by this Resolution. This
notification must state that the new Debian Social Contract supercedes
the older version. Subject to the decisions made in section B, this
notification must also include information about the disposition of
historic and current stable non-free software.
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