Re: General resolution: Condemn Russian invasion of the Ukraine
Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> writes:
> Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
> body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.
> This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
> issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
> of Ukraine.
> ==== Text of GR ====
> The Debian project issues the following statement:
> The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
> Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
> nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
> Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.
I think this is too far afield of the purpose and subject matter expertise
of Debian for it to be a good idea for us to issue a statement on it.
I understand the desire, and I'm not saying I disagree with the statement
in any way. But Debian is an organization focused on a specific purpose,
and I think there should be some direct relationship between actions we
take and that purpose. The previous GR about RMS was highly controversial
for a number of reasons including that one (indeed, the project voted to
not make a statement largely for that reason), and there I think the
connection was far more direct: we work directly with the FSF, we are part
of the free software community and its leadership is directly relevant to
our work, and so forth.
Here, while I suspect this statement is less controversial among project
members, the connection is far more remote. There really isn't anything
meaningful that Debian could do to act on such a statement. It's just a
statement about an ongoing world event that's only related to the work of
the project insofar as it's a world event.
I think it's not a good idea to go down this path. The world is sadly
rife with things that one could take an position on, of varying degrees of
controversy, and I'd rather not get into a world where we're voting on,
say, climate change, universal health care, coups in various countries, or
so forth, when we have no special expertise and no special involvement.
If there's anything concrete that the Debian Project can do within the
scope of our work to assist members of the project who are directly
affected by the invasion, that would be another matter, but I also
strongly suspect that wouldn't require a GR.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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