Re: Debian Cloud Team delegation updates
On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 02:41:40AM +0200, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> It's been tempting on nearly every meeting that the team bypasses the
> Debian policy, and customizes the images with software backported from
> testing, and still call that Debian stable. It took a lot of explanation
> from Steve at the time, to explain that this isn't what Debian is.
This is just an issue of ignorance - relatively few people understand exactly
what it means to be Debian stable. It's obscure and technical. We're
unusually familiar with it, cloud vendors aren't.
You might be frustrated by these discussions, and that's reasonable. But I
don't think anyone is releasing images as Debian stable that e.g. contain
packages from testing. So I think the policy is being followed, even if it
takes discussion to get there.
> As per the delegation text:
>
> "the Delegates will:
> - Advocate for the adoption and advancement of Free Software cloud
> computing platforms and tools."
>
> How can the delegates push for more free software cloud computing
> platforms (and therefore, push for less non-free implementations like
> AWS, Azure, or GCE) if they are bound to an employer non-free cloud as
> primary business? This is a direct conflict of interest.
In my opinion the situation with Debian on proprietary clouds is similar to
that of non-free. Many users want free software on proprietary clouds. Some
would like to help them with that. There's no expectation that everyone must.
I'd like this delegation text updated to something closer to the language used
to describe non-free in the social contract.
> I've been the only person officially standing for an implementation of
> cloud computing which is free-software. As an alternative for cloud
> computing with completely closed software. And in all of the meetings.
I think it's great that you can do this. But not everyone has the luxury of
choosing which cloud vendors they work with. Often times, these choices are
made by executives or external factors. I'm in that situation, and I'd still
prefer to use Debian. I'd prefer to help others in similar situations use
Debian.
I hope you'll try to tolerate that others work on proprietary clouds.
Otherwise, I guess I'll be using proprietary operating systems too - and that's
clearly a worse outcome.
> If then we get all of the delegates being affiliated with a commercial
> clouds (even if it was 3 different providers), I would feel less
> comfortable. There's the danger that the team gets even more tempted to
> break these rules, because it'd be "more convenient" for example.
This is extremely unlikely, as delegates must be Debian members. Please
remember to assume good faith from other members of the project.
Ross
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