Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> writes: > Hi Simon! > > On Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 09:06:38AM +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote: >> >>================== >> >>We continue to stand by the spirit of the Debian Social Contract §1 >>which says: >> >> Debian will remain 100% free >> >> We provide the guidelines that we use to determine if a work is >> "free" in the document entitled "The Debian Free Software >> Guidelines". We promise that the Debian system and all its components >> will be free according to these guidelines. We will support people >> who create or use both free and non-free works on Debian. We will >> never make the system require the use of a non-free component. >> >>Therefore we will not include any non-free software in Debian, nor in the >>main archive or installer/live/cloud or other official images, and will >>not enable anything from non-free or contrib by default. >> >>We also continue to stand by the spirit of the Debian Social Contract §5 >>which says: >> >> Works that do not meet our free software standards >> >> We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of works that >> do not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have >> created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our archive for these >> works. The packages in these areas are not part of the Debian system, >> although they have been configured for use with Debian. We encourage >> CD manufacturers to read the licenses of the packages in these areas >> and determine if they can distribute the packages on their CDs. Thus, >> although non-free works are not a part of Debian, we support their >> use and provide infrastructure for non-free packages (such as our bug >> tracking system and mailing lists). >> >>Thereby re-inforcing the interpretation that any installer or image with >>non-free software on it is not part of the Debian system, but that we >>support their use and welcome others to distribute such work. >> >>================== > > This last bit of wording is slightly unclear to me. Should *Debian* be > allowed to distribute an installer or image with non-free software on > it? Hi Steve. I'm not sure I can reliably answer -- the distinction between "Debian" as the project and "Debian" as the operating system is (for me) somewhat blurry and inconsistent throughout the current foundational documents, and it is equally unclear (to me) in your question. Do you intend the Debian OS (which to me includes various installers and other auxilliary software that is needed to produce and maintain an OS) or the Debian project (which to me is about the community and not the deliverable)? Or is your understanding of the situation different than mine so your question really mean different things to us? I have a feeling that is the case, but it is subtle. I believe it used to be better in the older social contract which used 'Debian GNU/Linux' in a couple of places which made it clear that the sentence referred to the deliverable and not the community. That was lost a couple of years ago, replacing it with 'Debian' which makes it unclear what it refers to. The website has been similary modified throughout the years, leading to the same ambiguity. Speaking personally (and thus merely as an anecdote), my way to resolve this conflict (when I belatedly decided to join as DD) has been that 'Debian' as an OS is promised to be 100% DFSG free but 'Debian' as a project will accept to distribute certain non-free material on its servers. Thus Debian can be labeled as a 100% free OS but Debian as a project deals with non-free content but not as a first-class citizen. This has lead to forks that don't want to be stuck with the same dilemma -- Ubuntu/etc as a non-free variant and gNewSense/PureOS/etc as a free variant. This inconsistency may continue to be both a curse and a blessing, allowing Debian to be relevant to both worlds. I agree with you that improving clarity on this topic will be a good thing. Fixing that is outside of my current goals though, as what I want to achieve is to see Debian continue to deliver a 100% DFSG-free Debian OS. It makes me sad to see such efforts to stop that. /Simon
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