Ean Schuessler wrote:
So, is that "free as in beer"? If freedom of expression isn't a priority then what exactly is Software Libre?No, the central motivation for the project is to make a good, free operating system. The "Deb" stands for "Debra", not "Debating".
Free software's about writing good code, and making it freely usable and modifiable by anyone.
Freedom of expression is about being able to say whatever you think, no matter how counter-productive, irrelevant, wrong, meaningless, offensive, or uninteresting it is. That's a good thing to have *somewhere*, but better to keep it on your blog than on Debian's mailing lists.
That, at least, is why I have a blog; and it's why I even wrote a plugin so that some of my more offensive/uninteresting/irrelevant posts don't even make it to Planet Debian.
The best way Debian can promote freedom of expression is by providing software to enable it (such as blogging packages, and a good OS to run on a server that hosts lists, debates, or blogs) -- not by trying to reuse its fora as an outlet for random opinions.
I do agree with you that endless debate for the sake of lip-flapping is one of the project's biggest challenges. I just think you are over-simplifying the solutions.
In my experience, if you don't keep the principles simple and direct, the policies become byzantine and unimplementable. I also don't think it's a good idea for a DPL to go too much into defining policies that someone else will have to implement anyway.
Cheers, aj