Re: Proposal - Constitutional Amendment: Associate Foundation Documents to Releases
Chad Walstrom dijo [Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 05:17:46PM -0500]:
> [This is a counter proposal to Manoj's I originally posted on
> debian-vote. I've substituted "Published" with "Ratified" and removed
> "versions".]
>
> I propose to add the following to the Constitution:
>
> § 5.1.4. Ratified versions of Foundation Documents shall be formally
> associated to specific releases of the Debian system.
I don't completely agree. Yes, I understand that by versioning the SC
we could say that the old SC applies to Sarge and the new one will
apply to WhateverFollows - But we would be stuck with the same
problem. I think that AJ made a very real problem quite visible: We
don't comply 100% with our SC. Even going back to the previous one, we
are still taking permissions we probably shouldn't if we were true to
our philosophy, as many people have pointed out here. Debian is not
and has never been '100% free software'.
Another idea would be to give the SC the formal status of 'what we try
to achieve', admitting that, as human beings living in the real world,
we will end up a bit off our target - and publicly admitting we will
never reach 100% compliance with our own documents. While this might
keep the most pragmatic DDs happy, many of us will not agree, as the
gray areas will become too broad, and any particular DD will be able
to decide by himself whether a package is free enough or not for
inclusion... Probably leading to hell, or even beyond.
I think the only thing left for us to do is to admit that Sarge will
not be perfect, and -as stated in the GR proposed by Manoj- make a
commitment to move to a more complete compliance. And... Well,
probably the only way we will get out of the tar pit will be at a
long, exhausting brainstorming session next Debconf. I think this
topic warrants a full evening of DDs screaming at each other.
Greetings,
--
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.cx - (+52-55)5630-9700 ext. 1366
PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23
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