On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 12:28:38AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: > Old: "1. Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software" > > If we ignore the rest of the social contract, there's two distinct > interpretations of this phrase. > > [A] Software which Debian distributes which is completely free will > remain completely free. > > [B] Debian only distributes free software and will continue distributing > only free software. > > If we look at what Debian actually does, and/or the rest of the social > contract, [A] makes sense, but [B] contradicts both the rest of the > social contract and the current structure of Debian. It's only contradictory when you assume that Debian distributing software implies that the software distributed is part of Debian in one way or another! If you look at both of your examples, you will realize that this *is* an assumption you are making. Why don't you assume for a moment (as I have since for the last half decade) that Debian distributing software from the FTP site does not imply inclusion in the Debian system or being part of Debian. It must be a common type of confusion because that's pretty much word for word what Section 5 says. If non-free is *not* part of Debian (as the social contract currently implies) but is distributed from our FTP servers (as the social contract currently commits us to doing) we must assume that Debian distributes non-free software but that this act distribution does not imply that is part of Debian. I view this as an important compromise the social contract struck between those folks who did not want to (or would not!) work on a project that was not an explicitly a Free Software project and those who did wanted to have the project distribute and support non-free software. This proposal seems like it will alienate this first group and I think this is a very bad idea for reasons you've described in other messages on this mailing list. > 1. Debian Shall Continue Distributing Software That's 100% Free You're changing a sentence about what Debian is made of to one that's about what Debian distributes. IMHO, what Debian defines itself as is more important than what bits they move around. Moreover, the way you've worded this makes me think that as long as Debian has a single GPL'ed shell script in a sea of non-free software, we're doing our job. I guess that means I think it needs work. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.yukidoke.org/
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