On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 08:39:49PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: > On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 07:11:41PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > It seems to me, then, that we are already in practice treating non-free > > as less important than the main distribution. Moreover, we have been > > doing so for quite some time. > > > > In this sense, the removal of clause 5 from the Social Contract would > > simply seem to be an acknowledgement of the status quo, similar to my > > proposed amendment to clause 3. > > You seem to be saying that parts of the social contract which are less > important than other parts should be removed from the social contract. No, what I'm saying that which is not of central importance to the mission of our Project should not be in the Social Contract. Only the broadest of policy decisions (and I don't mean policy in the technical sense of the Debian Policy manual) should be rooted in the Social Contract. For example, the U.S. Constitution does not specify the penalty for kidnapping. That's a statutory matter, not a major organizational principle. The whole point of my proposal to drop clause 5 from the Social Contract is to make the retention or removal of the non-free section a matter of mundane policy, rather than something enshrined as a commandment. I'm sorry if this did not come through clearly in rationale 13 of my RFD. > Like Anthony, I'm concerned that this says nothing about us distributing > non-free software. We do lots of things that aren't specifically mandated by the Social Contract, like run lintian on our packages or host arguments between advocates of exec-shield and PaX on our mailing lists. > It's entirely possible to interpret your amendment as forbidding the > distribution of non-free software [without violating the above > language]. Well, given that that's explicitly what I said it doesn't mean, I wonder if anyone would dare be so obtuse, but I'll take this into consideration. > "Of course we support users of non-free software -- XYZZY runs fine on > our glibc." I don't think there's anything illegitimate about such a statement. If that's as much of an assurance as we can reasonably make regarding the DSFG-incompatible work XYZZY, then that's enough. > I urge you to consider language which allows the ftp archive maintainers > distribute non-free software from debian mirrors should they deem this a > good idea. The language of the amendment does not explicitly disallow this, and is not intended to implicitly do so. > Specifically, one which aligns with the ideals expressed in: > http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2003/debian-vote-200311/msg00119.html Eh? What ideals? That it should be an administrative decision? How does what I've proposed conflict with that position in any way? > > It is thus not true that, if my proposed amendment passes, that we're > > encouraged to tell users of non-free software on Debian systems to go > > take a flying leap. We will continue to do what we can for them. > > Taking a flying leap isn't the issue. The issue is what would the social > contract allow us to do. *shrug* It apparently allows us to knowingly release non-DFSG-works in sarge as long they're "documentation", by some definition which hasn't been offered. If we can treat the Social Contract as a flexible document in that respect, then I do not see why we cannot treat it as generally flexible. If there are certain promises it makes that we're serious about, and others we'd rather have some wiggle room on, then prehaps the language should be recast to reflect that. Or maybe the Social Contract is more of a "this is stuff we'll try really really hard to do, but reserve the right not to if it greatly inconveniences someone" than a statement of strong guarantees. Maybe not. > [In the past, various people have said that Ian Jackson's original draft > of the constitution was awful because of ambiguities contained therein. > I thought you were one of them? I don't think I ever characterized it as "awful". Do you have a cite to offer? > Anyways, I don't know why you're pushing so hard for a social contract > with this kind of ambiguity in it.] Some would say, and appear to act as if, ambiguity is already present. -- G. Branden Robinson | The key to being a Southern Debian GNU/Linux | Baptist: It ain't a sin if you branden@debian.org | don't get caught. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Anthony Davidson
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