I was asked offlist to answer how Proposal D would affect the display of the non-free installer on Debian websites, and in particular: * Would it prevent the current presentation of the non-free installer? tl;dr: No * Would it prevent the alternative presentation suggested in https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/683a7c0e69b081aae8c46bd4027bf7537475624a.camel@debian.org ? tl;dr: No tl: Proposal D by itself offers no explicit guidance on these questions. D is a NOTA choice to stand by our current foundation documents, allowing developers to do what they want within those constraints and our usual conflict resolution processes. Thus my answer will be my interpretation of what our current policies already says. I'm sure others will have (hopefully only slightly) different interpretations, and I also realize I'm junior when it comes to these documents and their history and intended interpration. I'll try to provide my answer below. If there is strong disagreement of my interpretation, more discussion to clarify the situation may help. The social contract says Debian [system] will always be 100% free. I include the installers in the system -- it could be argued that an installer isn't part of the installed Debian system, but I don't think that is a useful way of reasoning. An operating system without any way to install it is not a operating system, in my opinion, but rather an academic work or piece of art. The social contract says some people need non-free works and have committed to supporting that. It says that these works is not part of the Debian system but that Debian still sponsor their existance for hosting and bug trackers etc. I don't think the intention was that there would ever be a non-free installer originally, but there is explicit acceptance towards non-free works in the Debian project generally, and a non-free installer would be one example of that. Now back to the questions. First, I think the terms "hidden" and "official" are not that helpful, so I will not use them, and given the uncertainty about what they mean I suggest we use them less than we do today. I don't see any conflict with our social contract for the Debian project to publish a non-free installer. However the installer would not be part of the Debian system, by implication, since that would violate DSC§1. The social contract allows the Debian project to publish non-free works through non-free/contrib areas, so while probably not initially intended to happen, interested folks could always upload a non-free Debian installer to non-free and have that be published by Debian. I don't see how anyone could object to that, under our current policies. Linking to the non-free installer from the Debian front page seems acceptable (or at least not in direct conflict with the social contract), but depending on how it is executed may be poor judgement and would give a strange impression of what Debian is about. To make sense for a user coming to Debian and wondering what we are about and what we provide, I believe we need to provide a free installer and that the distinction between the installers are described and preferably that it is clear that while the non-free installer is not part of the Debian system, it can be used to install the Debian system. So with all these words, my belief is that publications of non-free installers are already acceptable under the social contract as long as they don't claim to be part of the Debian system, and that it isn't the case that the non-free installer is the only installer available. /Simon Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> writes: > On Mon, 2022-08-29 at 21:49 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: > >> 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? > > and if so, how/where should we be allowed to mention/document/promote > the images containing non-free firmware? > > Currently the existing images containing non-free firmware are > mentioned on the download page linked from the website front page, > but are labelled "unofficial" and in the "Other Installers" section. > > https://www.debian.org/download > > The longer older download pages similarly labels the non-free firmware > images as "unofficial" and mention them at the very end of the page. > > https://www.debian.org/distrib/ > > The even older Debian CD page doesn't mention non-free firmware at all. > > https://www.debian.org/CD/ > > The Debian installation guide has sections on non-free firmware, the > first one seems to be outdated as it seems to imply the firmware images > are not possible. > > https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch02s02.en.html > https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch06s04.en.html
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