On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 12:29:40PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > ====================================================================== > > 4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election > > 4.1. Powers > > Together, the Developers may: > 1. Appoint or recall the Project Leader. > 2. Amend this constitution, provided they agree with a 3:1 majority. > 3. Override any decision by the Project Leader or a Delegate. > 4. Override any decision by the Technical Committee, provided they > agree with a 2:1 majority. > - 5. Issue nontechnical policy documents and statements. > - These include documents describing the goals of the project, its > - relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical > - policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian > - software must meet. > - They may also include position statements about issues of the day. > + 5. Issue, supersede and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and > + statements. > + These include documents describing the goals of the project, its > + relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical > + policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian > + software must meet. > + They may also include position statements about issues of the day. > + 5.1 A Foundation Document is a document or statement regarded as > + critical to the Project's mission and purposes. > + 5.2 The Foundation Documents are the works entitled "Debian > + Social Contract" and "Debian Free Software Guidelines". > + 5.3 A Foundation Document requires a 3:1 super-majority for its > + supercession. New Foundation Documents are issued and > + existing ones withdrawn by amending the list of Foundation > + Documents in this constitution. > 6. Together with the Project Leader and SPI, make decisions about > property held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See > s.9.1.) Thanks for preparing this latest version, Manoj. I propose the following amendment: - 5.2 The Foundation Documents are the works entitled "Debian - Social Contract" and "Debian Free Software Guidelines". + 5.2 The Foundation Document is the work entitled "Debian + Social Contract". Rationale --------- It occurs to me that there are some people who may wish to afford the Debian Social Contract the opportunity of a 25% minority veto, but not wish to extend this to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. My reasoning is grounded on an following argument which I made on debian-legal several months ago. My experience in the Debian Project leads me to believe that we approach licensing issues in a quasi-judicial fashion. We have certain bedrock principles which are broad and general, embodied in our Social Contract. Above that we have at least two layers of increasingly detailed, but less foundational, articulation of principle. In my opinion, this is only natural. When faced with a software license and we have to answer the question "is this Free Software?", we can take one of two approaches: have some sort of Freedom Oracle who cogitates upon the question for a while and gives us an answer, or we can attempt in a collaborative manner to argue and reason our way towards an answer. Here's the analogy I presented to debian-legal back in March 2003: FSF's definition of Free Software --> Constitution Debian Free Software Guidelines --> statutory law debian-legal discussions --> case law (The above is admittedly wholly grounded on the U.S. legal system for its metaphorical value.) This is part of the reason I think it wouldn't be a disaster if we permitted the DFSG to be modified through a majority vote of the developers -- that's because it's not the REAL foundation. The real foundation lies in our answer to the question, "What is freedom?" Our Social Contract pledges us to Free Software; the Debian Free Software Guidelines are not a *definition* of Free Software, but rather a template into which we place a license; we then see if the license fails to mesh with the template in some way. So the Debian archive administrators and the debian-legal mailing list, to whom it often falls to resolve questions about the licensing of a work we are to distribute, attempt to interpret the DFSG and the licenses brought before them. Every package maintainer who cares to pay attention to the license on the work he or she is packaging also plays a part in this process. We analyze licenses for "freeness" in a context -- an *important* context -- which is our understanding of what freedom means. This is one reason we should not be overly literal in our interpretations of the DFSG, and blithely brand a license as "DFSG-free" if it seems to abide by letter of the DFSG in its narrowest reading, but poses a threat to our users or Free Software that we did not have the foresight to articulate in the DFSG. The Social Contract pledges us to defend the interests of our users and Free Software, not to push into "main" every work that fails to run afoul of the Debian Free Software Guidelines in some specific way. Thus, I think we should regard the DFSG as akin to "statutory law"; it's important, and violating it has consequences, but ultimately it is just a tool in service of the foundational principles. In the U.S., where statutory law conflicts with the Constitution, the law loses -- and it is judges who make this determination. For the Debian Project, I think that if the DFSG and the meaning of freedom conflict -- whether the DFSG is too permissive in a given case or not permissive enough -- our foundation of freedom must triumph, and the DFSG must be re-interpreted or modified. Therefore, I think it might be a good idea if the DFSG were allowed to be more of a "living document" than the Social Contract. If the DFSG is amendable with a simply majority, it will be more easily able to ebb and flow with the lessons we learn on the debian-legal mailing list, and better able to react to the creative new ways some proprietary software interests find to undermine freedom. The debian-legal list may be on the front lines of this effort, but it will still fall to the entire Project to ratify actual changes to the text of the DFSG, though section 4.1.5 of the Constitution. I do not, however, see why a 3:1 supermajority should be required to modify a document with as narrow a focus as the DFSG has. -- G. Branden Robinson | I had thought very carefully about Debian GNU/Linux | committing hara-kiri over this, but branden@debian.org | I overslept this morning. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Toshio Yamaguchi
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature