Re: Call for seconds: post-Lenny enforceability of DFSG violations

[Thomas Viehmann <tv@beamnet.de>]

Hi Robert,

Robert Millan wrote:
> I don't think NEW is the problem here.  The question, from my POV, is that
> as developer I don't feel I am empowered to move a package to non-free
> without permission from the maintainers, even if it is obviously infringing
> on the Social Contract.

For all but three packages (linux-2.6, glibc, portmap), we seem to have
cared even less to date and just removed it from Debian and left it to
people who care about the package to see whether reintroducing it in
non-free or contacting authors or whatever is the best option, the
latest example being ted (where nobody seemed to have cared all that
much, but had to remove e.g. more games than we liked to have to remove
over license concerns, too).

As you seem to have conceded (for the purposes of this resolution) to
seeing the DFSG-violations fixed post-Lenny and with the linux-2.6 (with
Ben's work) and hopefully also glibc and portmap (now that Sun people
seem to be interested in looking for ways to help) being on a good way,
maybe it would be best to bring this up again should things not be
fixed, say, 2 months after the lenny release?

There are two points I would like to see considered then
- once we reach a point where a package is DFSG-free, we can much better
  enforce that it should be reverted to that point (seems a lot less
  invasive to me than moving to non-free),

- I still have doubts about the implications of moving to non-free for
  the reverse dependencies. The SC expressedly forbids requiring
  non-free components. To me, that seems like a major obstacle making
  dropping features much preferable to moving things to non-free.

Finally, I must say, that I'd much rather see a dispute over how a
specific violation should be handled than specific instructions just
reinforcing the status quo enlarging the SC. If then the outcome leads
you to believe things need added to the SC, it might be a much better
time to bring a resolution and tell the project "hey, here is a
violation, now is the time to do something about it, if you want
non-free stuff out of main, you need to act now or fact the same thing
for squeeze that you did for lenny, etch, sarge, ...". Personally, I'd
be more than happy to rip out portmap (solves more bugs that are long
overdue, too!), but then I don't like to use it either.

Kind regards

T.
-- 
Thomas Viehmann, http://thomas.viehmann.net/