Re: Firmware & Social Contract: GR proposal
On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 08:53:29PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 12:32:15PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > working out for us. The ballot that chose the current social contract
> > > didn't have any alternatives included, and was conducted immediately
> > > following the constitutional amendment to allow voting on non-free
> > > removal, the non-free removal debate itself and then the DPL elections,
> > > with only minimal discussion on -vote, most of which occurred prior to
> > > the non-free vote.
> > It was ratified by a large majority though, and i clearly remember 4-5 options
> > on that ballot.
>
> There was a second ballot, which had six options on it, namely "delay
> the SC change until Sept 1st 2004", "delay the SC change until sarge
> releases", "apologise", "revert to SC 1.0", "create a transition guide
> for the SC and DFSG", "reaffirm the new SC".
>
> The last option failed to achieve even a simple majority (188 ranked
> it below further discussion, 155 ranked it above), each of the other
> options achieved a 2:1 supermajority, but only the "delay the SC change"
> options achieved the required 3:1 supermajority.
Indeed, but the fact that "delay until sarge release" won by a large majority,
shows that our DDs did indeed reaffirm the new SC, even though they chose to
delay its application until after the sarge release, so, saying as you say
here, that because the "reaffirm the new SC" failed to get a simple majority,
that most DDs would prefer to revert to the older wording, failing to see that
this last one was indeed included (altough in a delayed way) in the option
that actually won by a 3:1 majority, is indeed very misleading, and why there
are people who profundly dislike the way you reason on things.
The fact that you made a huge statement back then about this, by resigning
from your RM position because of this further muddies the water about it.
> > Well, i believe that both of them basically said the same thing.
>
> Yes, we've had that discussion; the key point is you used the word
> "software" to cover more of the contents of main, than others did.
Well, but do you truly believe that this was not the original meaning of the
original social contract ? If anything else, it was strongly reafirmed in the
last of the pre-sarge non-free GRs. I mean, it did win and achieve the 3:1
supermajority, no ?
> > > I think:
> > > (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.
> > And the rest is what ? Hardware ?
>
> Firmware, documentation, images, sounds, videos, fonts, etc.
Software has only a meaning in opposition to hardware, all the above clasify
as software in this most common of original definitions of the word, and
firmware foremost of them.
> > Indeed, then [why] come back on the software vs program thingy, and retriger
> > another 3+ month of discussion and voting ?
>
> Because we don't have an alternative social contract that we understand
> well, and can adopt immediately without being in violation of it; and we
> can't get a new social contract that we understand well without spending
> some time to discuss it.
Why would we need an alternative social contract. We already have one, which
shows the values and goals that we call our own. The fact that we failed to do
so by a tiny amount (and face it, it is a tiny amount compared to the huge
amount of software which respects those goals and values) is not enough to
change that, and in particular with regard of the huge improvement we were
able to achieve in the etch development timeframe, and the fact that we have
indeed plans to sort this out in the etch development timeframe.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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