Re: Counter Proposal (was Re: General Resolution: Removing non-free)
On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 08:53:04PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> 5. Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards
>
> We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs
> that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Although
> non-free software is not a part of any Debian distribution, we will
> support its use and provide infrastructure (such as the "contrib"
> and "non-free" areas in our archive, our bug-tracking system and
> mailing lists) for non-free software. We encourage CD manufacturers
> to read the licenses of software packages in these directories and
> determine if they can distribute that software on their CDs.
This would be much more acceptable. However, current wording (that would be
left out with the above):
We have created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for
this software. The software in these directories is not part of the
Debian system, although it has been configured for use with Debian.
doesn't say we can't just move out non-free to a different place either in
the directory structure of the FTP archive, or to create a different server
for it. It isn't specified that non-free must be in this exact place where
it is now, directory-hierarchy-wise or even FTP-server-wise, it'd still be
our FTP archive. It doesn't say anything about putting stuff into package
acquisition tools that would explain to users that they're about to get
software that isn't free enough.
Such changes would more clearly state that we support non-free software just
because we're forced to do it for practical reasons :) and they wouldn't
require changing the Social Contract.
(And I'm not convinced that we are allowed to change it, that stuff sgore
pasted from the Constitution allows only creating new non-technical
documents, not modifying existing ones.)
--
Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
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