Draft for a non-fee poll (Was: Re: Let's vote already...)

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 01:02:41PM +0100, David N. Welton wrote:
> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> 
> > Yes, let's have a non-binding poll on this subject, so that this
> > meanigless flamewars can stop, and we can actually work on a way to
> > solve this following what the DDs really want to do.
> 
> By all means, let's vote on something already.
> 
> I'm against the idea of removing non-free, but let's have a vote
> already so that we can move on.

Ok, will you help me draft something, i am not really a good
administrative writer, but was thinking about something like :

---- begin of draft Poll to be submitted to vote ----

Since the non-free GR and the social contract modification GR
encountered nothing but flamewar, and a flamewar where only a few people
have posted (compared to the number of DDs), and often have made claims
about what the other DDs think or want without any real knowledge, let's
have a poll to measure what the real position of the Debian project, as
expressed by the debian developers, is on this issue.

Furthermore, i believe that the real issue is the non-free issue, and
that the social contract GR is only a way to achieve a solution to the
non-free GR, i propose that this poll will only be about the the
non-free issue, and its results will guide us in going forward with the
social contract ammendement, which can then be followed by a formal vote
on the non-free issue.

Ok, so here are the choices you may have :

  (1) let's keep the status quo. non-free is fine as it is, and we don't
  want to remove it.

  (2) let's remove non-free from our infrastructure.

  (3) we will remove non-free from the debian ftp servers, move it to a
  non-free.debian.org ftp archive maintained by the debian project, and
  still keep the support for non-free in the rest of our infrastructure
  (BTS, PTS, testing scripts, etc).

  (4) we will consider the issue package by package, removing those who
  are badly maintained, but keep those that are still cared for.
  
  (5) same as (4) but we will also make an active effort to free those
  that can be, either by discussing licencing issues with upstream,
  reimplement non-free parts, or work on improving replacement
  solutions. Each package in non-free will also include a description of
  the exact reason why it is non-free, a proposal of possible
  alternatives and what is still missing in them. We will also openly
  provide all information concerning the freeing of the package, things
  like discussion with upstream about licences, name and place of
  possible replacement, discussion about problems these replacement
  have, etc.

I repeat, this is not a formal vote, just a poll, which would help the
rest of the discussion take a more constructive way.

----  end of draft Poll to be submitted to vote  ----

Friendly,

Sven Luther