Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 02:15:01AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Dear technical ctte, if you are able to come to a conclusion on this
> topic, please make a decision as to whether the social contract requires
> non-free documentation, firmware, etc to be removed from main before
> release.

So... 

What are the technical criteria of relevance on this issue?

At first blush there are several conflicts: 

* between various interpretations of the old social contract

* between old social contract vs. new social contract

* between 100% free software vs. timely release

* between release discipline vs. the latest and greatest.

Also -- in part because our current BTS doesn't indicate which versions
bugs are fixed and released in -- there's something of a conflict between
the stablity of "the most recent version" where bugs are "fixed" and "the
stable version" where only herculean efforts make bug fixes available.

As usual, none of the options* we're faced with are particularly
appealing, but this ambiguity about what problem we're actually trying
to resolve is also troubling.

[*Obvious options: (1) delay release significantly or (2) approve
something contrary to the current social contract and contrary to some
interpretations of the previous social contract.]

-- 
Raul