On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 01:36:19PM +0200, Frank K?ster wrote: > Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote: > > There's two steps: > > (1) we're not going to meet the social contract for etch > > (2) having repeatedly failed to meet the new social contract over > > an extended period, we should reconsider whether it was a > > good idea to adopt it in the first place > Note that "repeatedly" means exactly "twice", but only if you replace > "having failed" by "going to have failed". We've failed to meet it for documentation, images, firmware, etc in sarge. We'll fail to meet it for firmware and logos in etch, including our own logo, and to the best of my knowledge, we're yet to consider addressing the license of documents like the Debian Manifesto, or the Debian Constitution. We don't have any prospect of meeting it for copyright texts themselves, either, a fact which is usually handwaved away entirely for "pragmatic" reasons. So yes, I count that as "repeatedly", and not particularly as "twice". For the people who don't consider the SC to have changed meaning when the word "software" was removed, we've knowingly failed to meet the SC every release since introducing it. > And "extended period" is about 2 and a half years, where [...] And yes, I consider two and a half years an extended period, whatever mitigating circumstances there might be. > Therefore I think it is hardly fair to say "repeatedly ... over an > extended period". Maybe you talk like this because the fact hurts you > so much; but honestly I think if we look at it from an objective point > of view, we've achieved a lot, maybe more than could be expected. I think we've achieved exactly as much as we should have expected -- we've removed non-free documentation for etch, and made some good progress on other things, with more to be expected for the next release. Unfortunately that's not what we expected or what we told others to expect, which was that the Debian System would be 100% free. > > Only (1) is justified by the poll. (2)'s my opinion; I think it makes > > sense, but YMMV. Without (1), (2) is irrelevant, of course. > Why should it be irrelevant without (1)? Would you feel less of a > failure if we release etch in summer 2008, without non-free firmware in > main? Huh? I don't feel like a failure at all. If you're trying to ask "would I feel we'd abided by the SC better if we released etch in mid-2008, without non-free firmware in main", then yes, I would. Which is why I wanted to know whether that was what our users actually wanted first. > I'm sure you wouldn't; If our users had wanted that, and we'd done it, I wouldn't think that was a failure at all. If our users didn't want it, but we'd delayed like that anyway, I'd think that was a massive failure. I realise everyone seems to be treating "let's release etch RSN and ignore the SC" as a given, but I would ask you to remember that this was introduced as "Etch timeline is unrealistic because non-free firmware is NOT being dealt with". Cheers, aj
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