Re: General Resolution: Handling of the non-free section
On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 01:42:23PM -0600, Debian Project Secretary wrote:
>
> General Resolution: Status of the non-free section
> Text: The actual text of the GR is:
>
> The next release of Debian will not be accompanied
> by a non-free section; there will be no more stable
> releases of the non-free section. The Debian project
> will cease active support of the non-free
> section. Clause 5 of the social contract is
> repealed.
>
> Since this modifies the Social Contract, thsi requires a 3:1
> majority to pass.
>
>
> Amendment Anthony Towns [ajt@debian.org]
> Amendment Text The actual text of the amendment is:
> Propose that the Debian project resolve that:
>
> Acknowledging that some of our users continue to
> require the use of programs that don't conform to the
> Debian Free Software Guidelines, we reaffirm our
> commitment to providing the contrib and non-free
> areas in our archive for packaged versions of such
> software, and to providing the use of our
> infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and
> mailing lists) to help with the maintenance of
> non-free software packages.
Umm.... this is very confusing. Are we expected to cast votes for
both the amendment and the general resolution at the same time?
Whether or not the Amendment carries is going to make an extreme and
material different as to how I would vote on the General Resolution,
since the Amendmend effectively changes the sense of the Resolution by
180 degrees.
If we are forced to cast both votes at the same time, someone who
wants to keep non-free and who votes aye to both the Amendment and the
Resolution may find themselves inadvertently voting to ditch non-free.
On the flip side, someone who wants to jettison non-free could vote
aye to the Resolution and nay to the amendment, could if the amendment
carries, inadvertently end up voting to keep non-free, which would not
be their intent.
As someone who would like to see non-free be kept, I suppose the valid
strategy, assume we are forced to vote on both the amendment and the
resolution at the same time, would be vote "nay" to the resolution,
and "aye" to the amendment, since if the resolution fails, the status
quo would prevail, and the votes on the amendment could be used to
provide a moral mandate one way or another about how DD's feel on this
issue.
This seems like a fairly convulting situation, however, and being
forced to vote on both seems to require a certain amount of gaming
one's vote, which is in my opinion, undesirable.
- Ted
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