On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 04:18:46PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 02, 2003 at 08:46:54PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 02, 2003 at 04:18:19AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 11:04:03PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > > > The draft so far adds no such proscription for the admins
> > > > (indeed, the whole point is to remove such a proscription).
> > >
> > > Yes. If the Social Contract had a provision proscribing the Debian
> > > Account Managers from disabling developers' accounts, and we voted by a
> > > landslide to remove that proscription, would it follow that the Debian
> > > Account Managers should immediately disable all developers' accounts?
> > >
> > > After all, they'd have a mandate, right?
> >
> > It would follow, so far as I can see, that they would deactivate developer
> > accounts under whatever criteria they saw fit.
>
> Yes. Let's keep in mind that those criteria are at least in part
> determined by generally accepted principles of conduct in the Project.
Agreed; I think, however, that the criteria in question are somewhat more
self-evident for deactivating accounts. Or, perhaps, that the problem is
that we have no clear idea what the criteria would *be*, for the non-free
case, while we can reasonably assume that the criteria for account removal
would look much like what it does today, *because* we have criteria today
to look at.
More on this below, probably.
> > Given the proscription that existed previously against doing so, this
> > would (likely) raise the number of such events from 0.
>
> I agree that that's a reasonable expectation.
>
> > Raising the specter of disabling all accounts is both hyperbole;
>
> (Both hyperbole and what?)
And some thought that trailed off while writing, causing me to miss editing
the sentance back into a saner form. :)
> In any case, I don't think so. That's what my proposed GR is accused of
> "really" meaning, so I don't think it's any more reasonable to expect the
> swift and sudden execution of all non-free packages through the
> unilateral action of the FTP admins than it would be to expect the swift
> and sudden deactivation of all developers' accounts if this hypothetical
> GR were passed.
>
> If you're saying that some people's "restatements" of my propose GR are
> hyperbolic, than I agree. :)
I would agree that some restatements of it are, indeed, bordering on
similar hyperbole. I don't accuse it of having any "secret agenda"; I
merely want to question whether the stated agenda might have unintended
consequences when dropped into the world at large.
> > however, it is not unthinkable that the FTP admins would take the
> > removal of the terms regarding non-free as a mandate allowing them to
> > remove portions of the archive as they saw fit, beyond the current
> > standards applied to all packages.
>
> I think even that is carrying it too far. I suspect the FTP admins
> would prefer to defer to the entire project before making such a
> decision.
My past experience supports this suspicion as to the most likely outcome,
but it also says "I've seen the FTP admins do/say things that don't always
make sense to me, or that I don't agree with".
> It's not like they don't have other responsibilities. I think it's a
> little fantastic to try to form a picture in people's minds of the
> Debian archive administration team huddled over their terminals, their
> faces lit only by a CRT with a little root shell prompt and the command
> "/project/org/ftp.debian.org/cabal/s3kr1t/nuke-non-free.pl" all keyed in
> and ready to go, their fingers poised over the enter key, a sweat of
> lustful anticipated beading on their upper lips.
No, but it makes an eerie image, doesn't it? :)
Of course, I *could* see the head of a certain well-known organization
which shall go unnamed but strongly implied in such a situation, but only
because the vision amuses me immensely (well, the path prompt would be
different, but :)
> > Perhaps they would, and perhaps not. I'm not even saying that I disagree
> > with removing the clause about supporting non-free. But I do firmly believe
> > that, short of a clearly expressed opinion in the GR itself directing them
> > to take a certain course of action (removal, or continued support status
> > quo, or some other option), they will excercise their power in whatever
> > manner they see fit.
>
> Well, yes. Do we have reason to mistrust their judgement?
I have reason to believe that I do not always understand their judgement or
agree with it; 'mistrust' probably has a more negative connotation than I
really want to convey.
> > Given that it would take another GR for the developers as a whole to
> > formally counter this, I'd prefer to simply settle the question in the
> > first pass (besides, it's polite to the folks we're asking to do the work
> > to tell them what, exactly, we want them to do).
>
> I don't want them to do anything in particular. The scope of my
> proposed GR is modification of the Social Contract, not the issuance of
> a list of demands to the Debian archive administration team.
The issue is that some people want them to *not* do certain things that
this would permit, at least for the time begin, and are not at the
moment sure what they *would* do, lacking a statement of intent or clear
communication from them on the subject.
I trust that they would use their best judgement, but I don't necessarily
trust that that would happen to agree with *my* best judgement, or that of
the developers voting on the GR.
> We can, as individual developers, ask the Debian Project Leader to
> advise them to not proceed precipitously, if he feels that is necessary.
>
> Are any Debian Developers reading this *actually* scared that the
> archive admins will suddenly "pull the plug" on non-free as a direct and
> immediate consequence of passage of a GR to drop clause 5 from the
> Social Contract? If so, please explain the grounds for your belief.
> You can reply to me privately if you fear that speaking frankly and
> publicly will result is some sort of reprisals from them.
>
> (For the record, I don't think "reprisals" are a reasonable fear either.
> If the DAMs shut off accounts every time they were criticized, there'd
> be a lot more packages maintained by Debian QA, probably including
> XFree86. :) )
Pffft. I've already said enough to annoy all of them anyway, if they were
inclined towards reprisal. I seriously doubt that they would pull the
plug the day after the vote passed; what I'm not so sure about is, say, a
policy of "no new packages without intense scrutiny, and hope for things
to atrophy into nothingness", particularly given that that is already a
de-facto policy much of the time. Increasing it to the point that it is
not *practically* possible to put things into non-free, without actually
dropping it, will still have many of the same effects in the long term.
That may not be a bad thing (heck, I think it might be a very GOOD thing),
but it is potentially a fairly significant change to the practical results.
> > However, if this language is, in fact, part of the GR itself (or language
> > of similar intent, with a more specific directive to the FTP admins,
> > such as has been suggested in other messages), I think that will address
> > it. Prefferably in the GR itself, rather than as "merely" accompanying
> > rationale, but that matter has been brought up in other parts of the thread
> > already.
>
> I am uncomfortable with expanding the scope of my proposed GR to include
> specific directives to anyone (well, except, I suppose, the implicit
> responsibility of the Debian WWW team and the doc-debian maintainer to
> see to it that an amended SC is reflected publicly within some
> reasonable time frame -- but that's not the sort of thing you're talking
> about).
You'll note that the first (if less preferred) option was referring to a
(more) explicit "statement of lack of intent" - that voting for this GR is
*not* to be taken, in any form, as a vote in favor of removing non-free,
only as a vote in favor of removing the requirement from the SC.
It has already been demonstrated that an (arguably) reasonable person
could construe the vote as an endorsement of removing non-free, if one
reads only the actual GR and not the rationale. The distinction may just
be the accountant's soul in the jar on my desk talking, of course.
--
Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
Debian GNU NetBSD/i386 porter : :' :
`. `'
`-
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