Re: Moving contrib and non-free of master.debian.org
On Jun 21, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> 5.Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards
>
> We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs that
> don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created
> "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for this software.
> The software in these directories is not part of the Debian system,
> although it has been configured for use with Debian. We encourage CD
> manufacturers to read the licenses of software packages in these
> directories and determine if they can distribute that software on
> their CDs. Thus, although non-free software isn't a part of Debian, we
> support its use, and we provide infrastructure (such as our
> bug-tracking system and mailing lists) for non-free software packages.
>
> Although it is compelling to want to think that this requires that
> non-free and contrib be on the same machine, I don't think that its
> phrasing would technicaly require that. What I would say is
> that encouraging bundling of non-free on a CD really puts the spirit of
> the document as supporting simultaneous distribution of contrib/non-free
> (does it really make sense to encourage CD vendors to bundle them and
> then refuse to put them together on our FTP site?).
The phrase "our ftp archive" implies to me the existence of one
unified FTP archive. This proposal would split this archive;
therefore, it's a change to the social contract. Perhaps I'm being
awfully literally minded.
(As I've already noted, however, the social contract does not have any
special status according to the Debian constitution; it is a
"non-technical document" and therefore apparently subject to the whim
of a majority of Q. Or does anyone have a different interpretation?)
Chris
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