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Second call for votes for the Lenny release GR



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With the resignation of our project Secretary, under section 7.2 of the 
Debian Constitution, as Chairman of the Debian Technical Committee, I 
now serve as the Acting Secretary.

Thank you to those of you who have shown your support over the past few 
days as I have worked to understand the mechanics of our voting system, 
and to comprehend the status of the current ballot.  I wasn't expecting to 
have to deal with this right now, and it helps my attitude immensely that 
100% of the comments I have received so far are positive and supportive!

There are a few people who deserve special mention.  First is Manoj 
Srivastava, our outgoing secretary, who served us admirably and honorably
in his long tenure, and who provided me a detailed "to do list" to complete 
the current vote.  Neil McGovern serving as our assistant secretary and Peter 
Palfrader from our admin team have both been great, helping me with needed 
technical support.  And Steve McIntyre and I are working well together on 
the process of finding a new Secretary for the project.

I spent the weekend reviewing the sequence of events leading up to the 
current vote, and seeking advice on how to proceed.  My initial reaction,
clearly mirrored by some others of you in the project, was to want to stop 
the current vote and start over.  It is clear that there are flaws with the 
way the current ballot is constructed.  In particular, mixing choices that
need supermajority with choices that don't seems likely to always lead to 
confusion.

However, after thinking long and hard about this, I can find no real 
constitutional basis for terminating the current vote.  Therefore, attached 
you will find the second call for votes.  The only substantive change is that
I corrected the date and time for ending this vote which were in error in the
first call for votes, and I've signed the key already in use for this vote.

I strongly encourage *every* Debian Developer to vote on this ballot.  The
beauty of our Debian voting system is that ranking the options allows us to 
convey a great deal of information about how we feel, beyond just picking a
winning choice.  By carefully placing "Further Discussion", we can indicate
which options we think are acceptable and in what rank above it, and which
options we think are unacceptable and in what rank below it.

For example, if you think this ballot is a mess and don't want to figure out 
what all the options mean, then the right choice is to vote a ballot that 
ranks "Further Discussion" ahead of all other options.  If you choose *not* 
to vote, then you are in effect saying that *any* of the options presented 
would be ok with you.  A vote for Further Discussion tells the world that you
think we should start over and try again with a better set of choices.  That 
is a completely ok result for the project.  It wouldn't "solve" anything, 
but it would do no harm.

I also strongly encourage every voter to take the time to read, understand,
and rank *all* of the presented options.  Even if you choose to rank some or
all of them below Further Discussion, ranking the various choices helps to 
convey your thinking about which choices would be better or worse, regardless
of whether you think any of the choices are what you really want.  

Thank you again for your continued support, and commitment to Debian!

Bdale



   SECOND CALL FOR VOTES FOR THE Lenny Release General Resolution
   ====== ==== === ===== === === ===== ======= ======= ==========

Voting period starts      00:00:01 UTC on Sunday,   December 14th, 2008
Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC on Saturday, December 28th, 2008

This ballot is for a vote being conducted as required by the Debian
Constitution.  You may see the constitution at
http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution.  For voting questions contact
secretary@debian.org.

Also, note that you can get a fresh ballot any time before the end of
the vote by sending a mail to 
   ballot@vote.debian.org 
with the subject "gr_lenny".


HOW TO VOTE

First, read the full text of the various proposals.

To cast a vote, it is necessary to send this ballot, with the text form
(which is embedded later in this ballot) filled out, to a dedicated
e-mail address, in a signed message, as described below. The dedicated
email address this ballot should be sent to is:

  gr_lenny@vote.debian.org

The form you need to fill out is contained at the bottom of this
message, marked with two lines containing the characters
'-=-=-=-=-=-'. Do not erase anything between those lines, and do not
change the choice names.

There are 7 choices in the form, which you may rank with numbers between
1 and 7. In the brackets next to your preferred choice, place a 1.
Place a 2 in the brackets next to your next choice. Continue until you
reach your last choice.  Do not enter a number smaller than 1 or larger
than 7.

You may skip numbers, leave some choices unranked, and rank options
equally.  Unranked choices are considered equally the least desired
choices, and ranked below all ranked choices.

Make sure you have read the proposals in detail.

To vote "no, no matter what", rank "Further Discussion" as more desirable
than the unacceptable choices, or you may rank the "Further Discussion"
choice and leave choices you consider unacceptable blank.  (Note: if the
"Further Discussion" choice is unranked, then it is equal to all other
unranked choices, if any -- no special consideration is given to the
"Further Discussion" choice by the voting software).

Finally, mail the filled out ballot to: gr_lenny@vote.debian.org.

Don't worry about spacing of the columns or any quote characters (">") that
your reply inserts.

NOTE: The vote must be GPG signed (or PGP signed) with your key that is
in the Debian keyring. The voting software (Devotee) accepts mail that
either contains only an unmangled OpenPGP message (RFC 2440 compliant),
or a PGP/MIME mail (RFC 3156 compliant). You may, if you wish, choose to
send a signed, encrypted ballot: use the vote key appended below for
encryption.

- - - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
41b0a520-c6c1-4e7b-8c49-74ee85faf242
[   ] Choice 1: Reaffirm the Social Contract
[   ] Choice 2: Allow Lenny to release with proprietary firmware [3:1]
[   ] Choice 3: Allow Lenny to release with DFSG violations [3:1]
[   ] Choice 4: Empower the release team to decide about allowing DFSG violations [3:1]
[   ] Choice 5: Assume blobs comply with GPL unless proven otherwise
[   ] Choice 6: Exclude source requirements for firmware (defined) [3:1]
[   ] Choice 7: Further Discussion
- - - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


The actual text of the various options are as follows. Please note
that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the
resolution, post-ambles to the resolutions, abstracts, fore-words,
after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls,
arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you
will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote
mailing list archives for details.

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Choice 1: Reaffirm the Social Contract
========= ======== === ====== ========

   1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free
      software community (Social Contract #4); 
   2. We acknowledge that we promised to deliver a 100% free operating
      system (Social Contract #1); 
   3. Given that we have known for two previous releases that we have
      non-free bits in various parts of Debian, and a lot of progress
      has been made, and we are almost to the point where we can
      provide a free version of the Debian operating system, we will
      delay the release of Lenny until such point that the work to
      free the operating system is complete (to the best of our
      knowledge as of 1 November 2008). 
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Choice 2: Allow Lenny to release with proprietary firmware [3:1]
====== == ===== ===== == ======= ==== =========== ======== =====

   1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free
      software community (Social Contract #4); 
   2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel
      firmware issue; most of the issues that were outstanding at the
      time of the last stable release have been sorted out. However,
      new issues in the kernel sources have cropped up fairly
      recently, and these new issues have not yet been addressed; 
   3. We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the
      progress made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian
      relative to the Etch release in Lenny (to the best of our
      knowledge as of 1 November 2008); 
   4. We give priority to the timely release of Lenny over sorting
      every bit out; for this reason, we will treat removal of
      sourceless firmware as a best-effort process, and deliver
      firmware as part of Debian Lenny as long as we are legally
      allowed to do so. 
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Choice 3: Allow Lenny to release with DFSG violations [3:1]
====== == ===== ===== == ======= ==== ==== ========== =====

   1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free
      software community (Social Contract #4); 
   2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel
      firmware issue; however, they are not yet finally sorted out; 
   3. We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the
      progress made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian
      relative to the Etch release in Lenny (to the best of our
      knowledge as of 1 November 2008); 
   4. We give priority to the timely release of Lenny over sorting
      every bit out; for this reason, we will treat removal of
      sourceless firmware as a best-effort process. 
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Choice 4: Empower the release team to decide about allowing DFSG violations [3:1]
====== == ======= === ======= ==== == ====== ===== ======== ==== ========== ====

   1. Debian's priorities are our users and free software. We don't
      trade them against each other. However, while getting a release
      out of the door, decisions need to be made about how to get a
      rock-stable release of the high quality Debian is known for,
      release more or less on time, and to minimize the usage of
      problematic software. We acknowledge that there is more than
      just one minefield our core developers and the release team are
      working on.
   2. We as Developers at large continue to trust our release team to
      follow all these goals, and therefore encourage them to continue
      making case-by-case decisions as they consider fit, and if
      necessary we authorize these decisions.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Choice 5: Assume blobs comply with GPL unless proven otherwise

   1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free
      software community (Social Contract #4); 
   2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel
      firmware issue; most of the issues that were outstanding at the
      time of the last stable release have been sorted out. However,
      new issues in the kernel sources have cropped up fairly
      recently, and these new issues have not yet been addressed; 
   3. We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the
      progress made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian
      relative to the Etch release in Lenny (to the best of our
      knowledge as of 1 November 2008); 
   4. We give priority to the timely release of Lenny over sorting
      every bit out; for this reason, we will treat removal of
      sourceless firmware as a best-effort process, and deliver
      firmware as part of Debian Lenny as long as we are legally
      allowed to do so, and the firmware is distributed upstream under
      a license that complies with the DFSG. 
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Choice 6: Exclude source requirements for firmware (defined) [3:1]

Firmware is data such as microcode or lookup tables that is loaded
into hardware components in order to make the component function
properly. It is not code that is run on the host CPU. 

Unfortunately such firmware often is distributed as so-called blobs,
with no source or further documentation that lets us learn how it
works or interacts with the hardware in question. By excluding such
firmware from Debian we exclude users that require such devices from
installing our operating system, or make it unnecessarily hard for
them. 

   1. firmware in Debian does not have to come with source. While we
      do prefer firmware that comes with source and documentation we
      will not require it, 
   2. we however do require all other freedoms that the DFSG mandate
      from components of our operating system, and 
   3. such firmware can and should be part of our official
      installation media. 
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

The responses to a valid vote shall be signed by the vote key created
for this vote. The public key for the vote, signed by the Project
secretary, is appended below.

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