Re: Clarifications
I'm certain that the message to which you have responded contained an
assertion that your proposed changes to s5 would make it logically
inconsistent with s4. Please repond to this assertion as made in my
original message.
On 10 Jun 2000, John Goerzen wrote:
> > I'd *thought* that the spirit of the organisation was summed up by
> > the Social Contract as it now stands. What you're suggesting flies
> > utterly in the face of s4, which says that not only "Free Software",
> > but "Our Users" are the priorities.
>
> Why do you assume that our users will be hurt by removing non-free
> from the FTP site? Remember that the distribution does not contain
Oh, it's not an assumption. As someone who runs (as a member of several
small groups of volunteers) several Debian systems (with about two hundred
users in total), I'd have to argue that anything which increases the
degree to which we have to go outside the Debian packaging system or
decreases the consistency, quality and interoperability of the systems we
run has to be a bad thing. We're volunteers. We don't have the resources
to go outside Debian too far, as this places an unrealistic burden on the
administrators who will be our successors.
Tracking Debian (for those systems which run `unstable') is hard enough,
let alone dealing with the brokenness caused by having multiple sources of
debs (Corel, Helixcode). Under your proposal, a separate system, not
integrated with Debian or whatever it is called by then, would have to be
established so that users can get at software which happens not to be
DFSG-free.
You're lucky the New Maintainer process has started rolling again or you'd
probably already have the disaffecti setting up such an organisation
before your Resolution had been voted upon.
I had thought that the purpose of the `DFSG-free' discriminant was to
establish which packages could be distributed without onerous
restrictions. It now appears that this pragmatic distinction is
retrospectively being reimposed onto the history of Debian as an
ideological principle. (That is, it appears this way to someone who only
heard of Debian in 1996 and only started following developments from
1998).
> non-free now. As this is software not in our distribution, but yet we
> put it on our FTP sites, it is no more than miscellany that ought to
> be expunged.
I consider this to be utter sophistry, though I gather that my view is
not nearly universally held.
Frankly if you want to have a completely free Debian system, why not
do it under the auspices of the FSF? They've got the resources. You don't
need to rearrange Debian resources to achieve this, if it's what you want,
and it doesn't injure existing Debian users. Moreover, the FSF is supposed
to be a political organisation; we don't need Debian to become one too.
Most of those two hundred users I mentioned above don't know they're using
Debian. It may be at the other end of an Appletalk or SMB or HTTP/SSL
connection, underneath the desktop GUI system, or at the other end of
their ssh and PuTTY connections. They might have heard of Linux. GNU?
Forget it. The distinction between non-free and main would be utterly lost
on them.
Removing non-free from the FTP archive will not teach these people or many
others anything about free software other than that the people who make it
can't be relied upon.
> > The proposal to remove non-free from Debian (and hence, AIUI, from
> > the normal archive) will have a deleterious effect on the users, and
>
> Why?
It increases the amount of effort they need to expend to do whatever is it
they do with their computer systems. Software systems are supposed to
decrease the amount of effort people need to expend.
> > > 5. Not distributing non-free software does not mean that non-free
> > > software cannot be easily used in Debian.
> >
> > Debian's apt-get is complicit in making software a LOT easier to discover
> > and install. That is also makes non-free software a lot easier to install
> > seems to have caused quite a few ructions.
>
> The fact that apt makes it easy is one reason that the proposal can go
> forth. All people need to do is update their sources.list files and
> things will still work.
There's no guarantee that the BTS won't be the next bombcrater, and apt
will NOT help resolve the cockups which will inevitably occur between
conflicting debs put out by separate organisations. The unity of the
Debian system is one of its strengths. Don't throw that away. The biggest
advantage of a system based on debs over one based on rpms is that the
tools which manipulate them don't blow up with broken dependencies so much
that you EXPECT them to fail every time (as I do with rpm).
> > Oh look! It wasn't "Our Users" and "Free Software". It was "our users and
> > the free software *community*" [my emphasis]. The proposed change injures
> > the interests both of the users (through having a more difficult system
> > to use) and those of the free software community, which will have to live
> > with an impoverished Debian system and the political flak from this
> > decision.
>
> The Debian system does not contain non-free now. How many times do I
> have to repeat this? The Debian system does not contain non-free.
To all intents and purposes, the Debian system contains non-free software.
If you worry that the users (remember that some of them don't even know
what Debian or Linux ARE) might not understand the subtle distinctions
between Distribution and distribution, rather than worrying about their
needs qua users, then you're just turning Debian into an explicitly
political organisation. Debian's an implicitly political organisation as
it is, since by the very act of going to so much effort to put the Debian
system together, it's advocating the use of free software, but Debian has
always struck me as putting free software before free software advocacy,
which is a Good Thing.
> You say it "injures" users but you don't say how. You say it injures
> the Free Software community because of an "impoverished" Debian
> system, and yet the Debian system would not change. You also fail to
> recognize that users of the Debian system do not necessarily use
> non-free, as it is not a part of the Debian system. And you fail to
> recognize that getting non-free software elsewhere is trivially.
The Debian system *de facto* contains non-free, irrespective of the *de
jure* position. Almost all users of Debian use non-free.
> > > 10. The Social Contract is not intended to be, nor can it be,
> > > immutable.
> >
> > I don't believe it was intended to be easily and quickly mutable, either,
>
> Which is why we are having this discussion now.
Well, I'm not familiar with the intricacies of the Debian constitution. I
got the impression that the ball was rolling and that we should be manning
the life boats already.
Mk
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