Re: Results for General Resolution: Lenny and resolving DFSG violations
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 09:55:36PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
>
> I would prefer this. But I am afraid of it, and so I would vote against
> it. I am afraid that there are folks in the project who really don't
> care if Debian is 100% free--even as a goal. I think that Ted Tso is
> even one of them.
Fear is a terrible thing to use as the basis of decisions and of
votes; consider it was fear that drove many people to vote for
Proposition 8 in California....
As I said in my recent blog entry[1], I believe that "100% free" is a
wonderful aspirational goal --- other things being equal. However, I
don't believe it to be something that should be Debian's Object of
Ultimate Concern; there are other things that need to be taken into
consideration --- for example, allowing various machines owned by
Debian to be able to use their network cards might be a nice touch.
[1] http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/12/28/debian-philosophy-and-people/
In other words, I believe in 100% Free as a goal; but I'm not a
fundamentalist nor a fanatic about it.
> I wish we could have in the world of GNU/Linux one, just one,
> please--just one--distribution which really took free software as of
> cardinal importance.
As others have pointed out, there is such a distribution, gNewSense; in
fact, if you look at [2], you will find that there are five others,
Ututu (the first fully free GNU/Linux distribution recognized by the
FSF), Dynebolic, Musix GNU+Linux, BLAG, and Trisquel. So not only is
there one such distribution that takes free software of cardinal
importance, there are six in the world already. Does Debian really
need to be the seventh such distribution?
[2] http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
> In my opinion, developers who are unwilling to abide by the Social
> Contract in their Debian work should resign. But they don't, and this
> is what has me afraid.
That would be like saying that people who don't agree with Proposition
Eight's amendment to the California constitution should leave the
state, as opposed to working to change it. I prefer to stay within
Debian in the hopes that I can help it change to something which I
think is better; at the very release, reverting the 1.1 version of the
Social Contract, and perhaps, clarifying it. I will note that Option
1, "Reaffirm the Social Contract" came in *dead* *last*:
Option
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
=== === === === === === ===
Option 1 46 60 72 73 89 117
Option 2 281 160 160 171 177 224
Option 3 255 61 125 137 151 204
Option 4 253 121 146 160 166 194
Option 5 234 105 128 135 136 191
Option 6 220 118 134 125 134 180
Option 7 226 129 145 153 160 169
It was beaten by options 2 (281 - 46 = 235), 3 (255 - 60 = 195), 4
(253 - 72 = 181), 5 (234 - 73 = 161), 6 (220 - 89 = 131) and 7/FD (226
- 117 = 109). Put another way, _very_ few people are willing to take
a fundamentalist interpretation of the Social contract (by AJ's
calculation, 9.3%) ahead of delaying Lenny.
I don't think encouraging 90% of the Debian Developers to resign would
be a particularly constructive suggestion. Fixing the Social Contract
so it reflects our common understanding of what's best for the Debian
Community, both users and developers, is IMHO a better choice than
striving to become the Seventh Fundamentalist Linux Distribution on
the FSF's approved list.
Best regards,
- Ted
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