Let me start by saying I support Raul's enthusiasm about this topic,
just not his proposals. I will not continue in a line-by-line shootout
over tangentials or get drawn away from examining the proposal at hand.
My overall disagreement with Raul's proposal is that most of the changes
he puts forth either increase the verbosity of the SC with no measurable
benefit or contain gratuitous grammatical errors. I am neither an
English professor nor an editor, but I value succinctness in documents
such as the Social Contract (SC).
The purpose of these ammendments is to increase the SC's resistance to
misinterpretation. I honestly disagree with the intended intrepretation
of Raul's proposals, thereby enforcing my opinion that they fall short
of their goal. This is not a slight to you, Raul, just the proposals.
I agree with Raul's assertion that Debian is a project and not "just" a
distribution. I realize this contradicts my earlier statement that
Debian, by definition is a distribution. However, it is a community
built around a distribution of software, a "collection of *.debs". I
don't believe it contradicts the idea that Debian's central goal is to
produce a quality, free, as in libre, distribution of software.
So, let's focus on making the SC less resistant to misinterpretation.
RM> We will continue to support free software, and non-free software, just
RM> as we always have.
CW> We know this is your agenda, although you claimed earlier in this post
CW> that your proposal would exclude it.
RM> I'm not sure what you're talking about here -- can you provide a
RM> reference?
Honestly, over the hundreds of posts you've made on the subject, the
message is quite clear whether directly or indirectly stated. I don't
plan researching the multiple threads to give explicit references to
what I interpret is your platform on the free v.s. non-free controversy.
Frankly, I don't care. A properly worded General Resolution will decide
what Debian supports in the future, not our bantering and mud-slinging.
--
Chad Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/
assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
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