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Another Non-Free Proposal



I am not a DD (yet), and this is not a GR proposal (yet). However, I'm requesting comments on it, and maybe it'll be more tenable to people more reluctant to remove non-free.

PROPOSAL 1
-------- -

Whereas,
	the Debian Project exists to create a distribution of free software;

	many Developers do not consider it moral or equitable to provide,
	freely, our project's resources to projects who are unwilling or
	unable to provide their code freely to the public;

	the importance of non-free software has greatly decreased since the
	founding of the project; and

	outside groups have been quite able to provide well-integrated
	software no harder to obtain than that from Debian's own mirror
	network:

It is resolved that,
	After the release of Sarge, Debian shall not continue to include
	non-free in "testing" or "unstable." Sarge shall be the last
	release of Debian to include a non-free section. We will continue
	to support the non-free section of Sarge for as long as the free
	section of it. People who still require non-free software after
	that are encouraged to set up their own distribution network for
	it.

To effect this, a new version of the Social Contract with only clauses 1 through 4 is hereby issued.


The major effective difference in this proposal is that Sarge will still include non-free, in order to give people plenty of time (3 years?) to migrate to free alternatives or find different hosting for their non-free packages.

Note that nothing in here changes our promise to "support our users who develop and run non-free software on Debian", which is in clause 1 of the Social Contract.



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