Re: Bug reports of DFSG violations are tagged ???lenny-ignore????
----- "Thomas Bushnell BSG" <tb@becket.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 16:00 -0500, William Pitcock wrote:
> > Unfortunately, those who contribute to Debian must be dedicated to
> > ensuring future releases of Debian support the latest available hardware
> > at time of release.
Really do have to disagree there. We should absolutely preferentially support quality hardware that facilitate user control.
>From a purely practical standpoint, there may come a time (because of evolutions in nanotech or who knows what) where certain type of digital technologies have strong controls that must be honored in order to preserve the safety of the general public. Given that scenerio I think we would have to be "100% free" and "100% obey the law". I think we can leave it to others to break the law for us (or, preferrably, secure legal permissions through proper channels). We don't need to distribute binary blobs to have a useful foundation for building other things.
If I was going to suggest any kind of change to the Social Contract at this point it would be:
6. Debian will obey the law
We acknowledge that our users live in real communities in the real world. We will support the needs of our users to comply with the laws that are applicable in the places where they use their software. We will strive to create the most usable operating system legally possible for our users. Within the boundaries of our resources we will work with our developers to track and adapt the changes necessary for them to comply with the laws and rules of their local authority. In the jurisdiction of authorities which are antagonistic to the cause of Free Software we will work within the boundaries of the law to promote change to a more open system.
...
Obviously, we can't be in the position of asking our donors or our users to purposefully break the law. Where law and logistics make it impossible to be "completely free" we must strive to be as "free as legally possible" and work to promote positive change.
--
Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com
ean@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315
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