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Re: Possible draft non-free firmware option with SC change



On 2022/09/08 11:27, Phil Morrell wrote:
     5. Works that do not meet our free software standards

     We acknowledge that our users may require the use of works that do
     not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Such packages
     are not part of the Debian system, but we provide the enabling
     infrastructure as a convenience to our users. This includes the bug
     tracking system, installation media, mailing lists and separate
     archive areas.

I liked Russ's suggestion a lot, and also agreed with your comments (I had similar thoughts when reading it initially).

I do think some parts are important to include though, how about:

"""
5. Works that do not meet our free software standards

We acknowledge that our users may require the use of works that do not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Such packages are not formally part of the Debian system, bug fixes and security updates depend entirely on their upstream developers. We provide the enabling infrastructure as a convenience to our users. This includes the bug tracking system, installation media, mailing lists and separate archive areas. We encourage software vendors who make use of non-free packages to carefully read the licenses of these packages to determine whether they can distribute it on their media or products.
"""

An added goal I'm trying to achieve with this change is to explain some practical consequences of redistributing non-free software. It's not like we provide the non-free archives and it's *wink* *wink* kind of official because Debian people provide it but it's not, instead it's the case that everything that makes Debian great really doesn't apply to these packages.

Also, I think a change like this is fine for this GR, but if it complicates things, then I think it's also worth while to tackle some finer points of the SC/DFSG in a follow-up GR really soon.

-Jonathan


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