Re: FYI: GNU Emacs Manual to be moved to non-free
Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@glug.org> wrote:
> Roland Mas <lolando@debian.org> writes:
>
> The problem is that the rules (guidelines, actually) for deciding
> what we consider free enough to put in Debian, and what we don't,
> do not emanate from the users but from our constitution and
> social contract.
>
> i'm no populist, but it strikes me no matter how you phrase it, that
> an organization dedicated to user freedoms has latent problems if its
> basic policy process doesn't emanate from the users.
Debian policy _doesn't_ emanate from its user base. We're not Red Hat,
or any other commercial entity that has to do that. Debian policy comes
from its members.
> We are not restricting our users, like your remark seems to imply
> we are. We are restricting ourselves.
>
> by restricting yourselves (in your mind, apart from the users) w/
> insufficient granularity, you end up in practice restricting the users
> anyway, driving them to help each other apart from you, and inducing
> their mistrust.
I think he means we member-drive, not user-driven.
What you say may be true, but Debian membership is high enough to have a
useful userbase. :-)
It's not that we don't care about users, it's that we care more about
freeness.
Peter
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