Subject: Proposal - keep non-free, but commit to actively encouraging making individual packages obsolet
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Hello,
As promised, i fill here a ammendment (or should it be called a
counter-proposal) to the remove non-free proposal. This can be seen as a
middle point between the two possibilities of the vote which were either keep
non-free and continue as usual or remove it and throw all the stuff in it to
the trashcan.
Anyway, here is the proposal, it just appends 5 lines to the point 5 of our
social contract. As said, i am no native english speaker, so i would welcome
help in making it fit to be added to the social contract.
- ------ start of modified social contract point 5 ------
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.
Still, we will actively encourage users of non-free software to migrate to
free alternatives when they are available, and either encourage the upstream
authors to modify their licence to a DFSG-free one and/or encourage the
development of free alternatives to a point where they can replace the
non-free software when they are not.
- ------ end of modified social contract point 5 ------
- ------ start of diff to the original social contract point 5 ------
@@ -9,3 +9,8 @@
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.
+Still, we will actively encourage users of non-free software to migrate to
+free alternatives when they are available, and either encourage the upstream
+authors to modify their licence to a DFSG-free one and/or encourage the
+development of free alternatives to a point where they can replace the
+non-free software when they are not.
- ------ end of diff to the original social contract point 5 ------
Ok, now for some discussion. As said, this is a middle point between simply
keeping or removing non-free. It will mean we will keep non-free, but as a
stepping point to help either free the package, or provide feature complete
enough free replacements.
The idea is to keep providing non-free indifinitely, but to have some
following of the individual packages inside of non-free, where each package in
non-free would be acompanied by a source of information (a web page, a file in
the document, ...) which provides reasons for why the package is in non-free
(like the full mail archive of discussion on debian-legal or other about it's
legal status), but also discussion with upstream on the possibilities to
change the licencing as well as discussion concerning possible replacements
and links to projects which work on those possible replacements.
The work associated with this additional duties would incombe to the
maintainer of the non-free packages, but the debian project would provide the
necessary infrastructure for it, ideally as part of the PTS.
So, i ask the people who are interested in such a proposal, or even which are
interested in providing one more option for the vote, to second this proposal,
and to help me making the necessary word changes that may be necessary.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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