Re: Non-Constitutional Voting Procedure

[Sven LUTHER <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Sat, Oct 28, 2000 at 09:40:52PM -0500, Joseph Carter wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 04:08:03AM -0500, Christian T. Steigies wrote:
> > > You miss my point, i am not speaking about big companies but about smaller
> > > groups, individuals or research institues or other such.
> > If you continue like this, I think you make me change my mind about debian
> > and non-free...
> 
> John's proposal is, IMO, a reaction to a growing movement within Debian
> against the DFSG.  I do believe that movement exists and has always
> existed to some degree, but it's on the rise as Linux gains in popularity
> and new people care less and less about the free foundation on which
> Debian stands.  They are the people who wanted to split non-free into
> non-cd and non-free.  They're the people who think the DFSG is too
> restrictive, and they're a part of the group who believe Debian can't
> divorce itself of non-free software now.  (In fact, they don't believe it
> could or should do so ever..)

So, why confuse the issue ?

Let's solve this as follows :

First ammend the constitution so the social contract and the DFSG need a 3-4
majority to change, as does the constitution.

  - This is most reasonable, i guess everyone will agree with that, doing
    otherwise is an admission that one planes to change the DFSG or Social
    contract.

Second change the DFSG so that it don't say we are forced to distribute non-free
anymore.

  - not sure this is really needed, some nice wording was found for that.

Third let's keep non-free, and purge stuff from there if there is no more
active maintainer for the mentioned packages, or if we decide there is an
alternative for it suiting everyone.

  - Not all package are ready to be done without right now, nor will be at the
    same time. Also let's make allowance for packages which have chances to
    become free in the future, or other special cases.

Later we can remove package from non-free, decided by the technical comitee or
some specially designed instance, or by a simple majority vote (and a clear
one, (should we remove package xxx, yes or no)).

What's so difficult about it ?

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER