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Re: Firmware & Social Contract: GR proposal



Le mardi 05 septembre 2006 à 17:44 +1000, Anthony Towns a écrit :
>     (a) The Social Contract shall be reverted to its original form,
>         as at http://www.debian.org/social_contract.1.0
> 
>     (b) The term "software" as used in the Social Contract shall be
>         presumed only to cover programs, scripts, libraries and similar
>         executable works to be executed directly as part of the Debian
>         System.
[etc.]

I think this would be completely overreacting.

Following the social contract change, we have been able to remove most
of non-free stuff from the distribution, especially documentation. It
wasn't easy and we couldn't make it in time for sarge, but we can make
it in time for etch. For etch, we have the remaining firmware issue. And
just because we can't meet our expectations for firmwares, we should
abandon them all?

It's not a decent way to go. You want "momentum"? Then recall what has
been done. Etch will have a *lot* less non-free stuff than sarge. This
should encourage us to go in this direction, not to step back because of
a difficulty. GRs have already been proposed to deal with the firmware
stuff and go forward. Your proposal only means that the work that has
been done for etch would be abandoned.


I'd also like to add some comments on the polls.

First, it is a fact that we are going to release etch with non-free
firmwares. There is no decision to make here, it is too late. Those
polls are only a means to legitimate this fact in a political way, by
making it looking as a decision.

Second, these polls all specifically talk about the *etch* release. Not
about the future. Proposing them with the "etch" word in them and then
using the (expected) result to propose a drastic change for future
releases is nothing more than manipulation.

I ask you again to stop that kind of maneuvers. If your passion is
politics, you should consider joining a political party. Debian isn't
the right place for that.
-- 
 .''`.           Josselin Mouette        /\./\
: :' :           josselin.mouette@ens-lyon.org
`. `'                        joss@debian.org
   `-  Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom



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