Dan Ritter wrote:
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 07:02:12PM +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:On Friday 17 October 2014 18:30:31 Andre N Batista wrote:I cannot believe some people still thinks [snip] that we should simply stick with the TC's authority regardless what.Surely no-one has ever said that?? References if someone has?Sven Joachim. "Because the people who do the work get to make the decisions, that's the way Debian works."
Given the percentage of Debian (and Linux) developers who are paid by Linux-based companies, that inevitably leads to decisions that are made in ways that advance vendor interests, not user interests.
As it stands now, the social contract states: 4. *Our priorities are our users and free software* We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environments. We will not object to non-free works that are intended to be used on Debian systems, or attempt to charge a fee to people who create or use such works. We will allow others to create distributions containing both the Debian system and other works, without any fee from us. In furtherance of these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality materials with no legal restrictions that would prevent such uses of the system.Now... if those who make decisions want to change that, through due process, that's fair game - but these are the current rules of the road.
I'll also note that (IMHO) "those who do the work" needs to be viewed as a larger group than just Debian developers. Those who contribute to the free software community - through development of software, through support, through promotion, and so forth are doing the work and contributing indirectly to Debian. In many (most) cases, "users and the free software community" ARE doing some of the work - but don't have a vote.
Note: I have nothing against Red Hat, Canonical, IBM, and other big players in the Linux world - they make serious contributions, we need them, and I applaud them. But just because they can pay the freight for large amounts of the development activity does not mean that they deserve a rubber stamp. (Conspiracy or not, in the current situation, systemd is driven by Red Hat players, and has pretty much forced other distros to fall into line - for example, Ubuntu's decision to adopt systemd is a direct result of Debian's).
Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra