Re: Debian and Non-Free Services
Hi!
On Fri, 2019-09-13 at 00:35:23 +0000, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On September 12, 2019 5:30:24 PM UTC, Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> wrote:
> >Ian said [3] that he was confident if we had a GR to forbid use of
> >services
> > like Github it would pass.
I very much doubt that, TBH, but…
> >He proposed the following text for such a GR.
> > Subject: Free Software Needs Free Tools
> >
> > No Debian contributor should be expected or encouraged, when working
> > to improve Debian, to use non-free tools. This includes proprietary
> > web services. We will ensure this, insofar as it is within Debian's
> > collective control.
> >
> > For example, Vcs-Git fields in source packages must not refer to
> > proprietary git code management systems. Non-Debian services are
> > acceptable here so long as they are principally Free Software.
> >
> > We encourage all our upstreams to use Free/Libre tools.
> >
> > We recognise that metadata in Debian which describes the behaviour
> > of those outside our community, for example fields which refer to
> > upstream source management systems, may (in order to be accurate)
> > still need to refer to proprietary systems.
>
> It's based on a false premise. No one is forced to use any VCS to
> maintain Debian packages. If you don't want to talk to GitHub, send
> a patch to the BTS.
Exactly. This GR seems just very misguided to me.
With git being distributed you could even just pull once and push
elsewhere, or ask someone else to do that. But even then we don't
really require any git repos, one can just «apt source» stuff. I'm
also not seeing how you can distinguish github from people's own
servers where you get no source for the software used, nor setup
instructions to replicate, etc, etc. In most cases you might not
even know what software is being used at all underneath!
This would end up with people delisting repos from the fields, while
still using them. Which personally I don't see as a huge loss, but I
assume Ian does?
To give some context, I was one of the so called "hard-liners" in the
vote to punt non-free from Debian. I think that's still an ideal I'd
like we pursued, even though I think the firmware case is a tolerable
exception (given that you end up running these blobs anyway even if
you do not update them). To me that leaves the non-free documentation,
which while bad, at least does not execute anything.
So, non-free tools that no one is forced to use are unnaceptable, but
documentation essential to do much work in Debian is not? Many GNU
packages have its entire docs in the non-free section (which I fully
agree with). In my mind a proper GR w/o the selective filtering would
imply we need to switch away too from most of those GNU packages,
starting with gcc, gdb, binutils, make, tar, bison, gawk, etc.
Thanks,
Guillem
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