Re: freedom-subtracted.debian.org (Ammend the SC)

[John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.arizona.edu>]

*Ian Keith Setford wrote:
> inspection most of Dale's points about contradictory statements are true.
> As with any contract, the use of vague language detracts from the
> contract's effectiveness.  I'm not even sure if the social contract is

  Dale has stated the obviously very clearly here.  But the situation is
vague for a reason.  Somehow a compromise was made, and "Debian" does not
want to admit to itself that this compromise was made.  Debian needs to 
be honest with itself. We need to throw out contrib and non-free or else
acknowledge the existing situation and change our thinking and language.
   A serious move to throw out non-free and contrib would cause great turmoil
among developers. Moving them out by degrees would perhaps be easier. I would
like us to acknowledge that we are not against non-dfsg software.  This does
not mean we do not have a goal of producing a 100% dfsg-free distribution.
The current situation supports this goal both in spirit and logistically.
But we also have packages which are non-dfsg-free, which we fully support,
but which can be ignored completely without affecting the %100 dfsg-free 
distribution.
	We need clean up the concepts and language and organize it in a way
that is also technically clean. "Here is the 100% dfsg-free stand alone
system, we are striving to make it as complete as possible, we are working
on licenses with upstream developers to try to make their software compatible
with the dfsg so it can be included here."  and "Here are additional packages,
whose absence in no way affects the functionality of the 100% free distribution,
but they are non-dfsg-free."
    (additionally the current non-free and contrib distinction should be 
preserved, but the main division should be clear and unambiguous, "dfsg-free"
and "non-dfsg-free".)



-- 
John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.arizona.edu>,  lapeyre@debian.org
Tucson,AZ     http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~lapeyre