On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 08:43:11PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> The effort to modify the Social Contract has stalled, and had
> degenerated into more dancing around this old issue. It's way past
> time to decide what we're actually going to do. We can work out how
> to do it later.
>
> I propose the following resolution:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The next release of Debian will not be accompanied by a non-free
> section; there will be no more stable releases of the non-free
> section. Uploads to the non-free section of the archive will be
> disabled as soon as is feasible. The Debian project will cease active
> support of the non-free section.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Some constraints have been applied here on when these things will
> happen, but most has been left deliberately vague. The fate of the
> files currently in unstable/non-free is deliberately unspecified.
>
> This conflicts with the Social Contract as it currently stands. I am
> aware of this and I do not care; we can fix the Social Contract
> later.
Why not fix it now, if fixed it should be? While I may find the proposition
of some of BR's changes a bit precarious (we don't guarantee non-free, but
we don't necessarily strike it yet either), I find this alternative to be
more or less nonsensical. If we're going to remove non-free, we should vote
to just remove it - including SC clause #5.
It also makes us look rather stupid, issuing a policy statement that is
in direct - and, upon proposal, admitted - conflict with a foundational
document.
I agree that all the dancing around the issue is silly, but dancing the
other circle isn't any better. But perhaps I'm missing something; can you
explain why this is better without the removal of SC #5? (Other than the
possible reason of not needing a 3:1 supermajority, which would be silly,
since actually DOING anything about it would still require a 3:1 SM vote
to remove clause #5 at some other time, before we could act on it without
violating our promises).
--
Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
Debian GNU/NetBSD(i386) porter : :' :
`. `'
`-
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