Re: Negative Summary of the Split Proposal
On 3 Jul 1999, Craig Brozefsky wrote:
> The Social Contract says that Debian is 100% Free Software. As it
> stands presently, there is not clear separation in the eyes of users
> between the free and non-free parts of Debian. The maintenance of
> non-free archives and mirrors was a favor to users, and we could
> safely do that when the distribution and package selection mechanisms
> made the distinction clearly.
But it is not the users we have comitted to make a distinction too. We
have said that we will produce something called The Debian Distribution
that is 100% free and we have done that. Anyone who cares to look can very
easially tell what is part of that and what is not.
> and alternative modes of retrieving Debian Software, the split is no
> longer as obvious, because there is no difference between grabbing a
> Debian package, and a non-Debian, non-free package.
Creating a new host doesn't do anything to help create a difference, the
tools are designed to not care where the packages come from.
> For this reason, the first item in the Social Contract is
> jeopardized. Not out of our negligence, or because somehow it's not
Oh, I strongly disagree,
1. Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software
We promise to keep the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free
software. As there are many definitions of free software, we include
the guidelines we use to determine if software is "free" below. We will
support our users who develop and run non-free software on Debian, but
we will never make the system depend on an item of non-free software.
We have and continue to do all the points mentioned in the first item.
Just because we don't shove it in the face of our users doesn't mean we
are not doing them! We have not pledged to make this distinction
absolutely clear without any shadow of a doubt to our users (in any event
that is a very shaky line to walk).
In fact statement 4 says we place the users interests first in our
priorities, and clause 5 pledges us to use our support structure to
provide non-free software to the users!
Personally, I feel that moving non-free, killing the mirror network and
using up the project's resources is harmfull to our users and only
benifits our comittment to free-software which is counter to the Social
Contract.
That is why the first item in my summary is that this proposal
mnay violate the Social Contract.
> "contrib.debian.org" in order to better indicate that it is outside of
> Debian and not part of it, but something which we provide some
Just a nit, but AFIAK non-free is part of The Debian Project, but it is
not part of The Debian Distribution. If it was not part of the project it
would not be hosted on our servers, be using our BTS, our developers, etc.
Jason
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