Re: "keep non-free" proposal

[Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 12:28:38AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> I've been asked to re-write my amendment which proposes to
> update the social contract, eliminating all independent issues
> - -- the idea being that this will be less confusing to voters.
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/debian-vote-200401/msg01636.html

Certainly a different approach, which I find fairly appealing.
A few comments;

> Old:  "1. Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software"
[...] 
> New:  "1. Debian Shall Continue Distributing Software That's 100% Free"
> 
> This is a bit longer than the original, but that's the cost of greater
> precision.

I don't like "Shall Continue", as it feels as though you have to know
that you're reading a second-edition social contract for it to make
sense. Would

New:  "1. Debian Will Continue to Distribute Software That's 100% Free"

be equivalent?

> Old:  "We promise to keep the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution entirely
> free software."
[...]
> New:  "We promise to keep the free software of the Debian System
> Distributions completely free."

I assume that this is deliberately not

New:  "We promise to keep the software of the Debian System
Distributions completely free."

(ie without the first "free") because then we get into confusion about 
what is Debian and what isn't.  (?) But then I feel a little like your 
new phrasing says nothing at all; what else would happen? And we
couldn't change the license on most software even if the social contract
allowed it, because we aren't the copyright holders.

> I propose we change the title of section 1 of the social contract,
> and the first sentence so they read:
> 
>   1. Debian Shall Continue Distributing Software That's 100% Free

I think this unfortunately ignores the issue of non-free documentation
too, though I suppose that's a fault of the original which has been
carried over. We don't make any committment not to keep non-free
documentation out of main, only non-free software.


Thanks
Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>