Hi Russ, As ever, I think you've described things very well here. Thanks for this! On Sun, Sep 11, 2022 at 01:22:58PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: >Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes: ... >> I think I'm missing a better problem statement to motivate any changes >> here. The ones I've tried to understand, by watching Steve's >> presentation this year and reading earlier mailing list posts, does not >> convince me: it appears to boil down to a desire to help more people be >> able to install Debian and join the community. That desire is >> understandable, but does not motivate compromising the social contract >> to me. > >This position makes a lot of sense to me. I happen to disagree with it, >but I think I understand why you hold it. I do think you're underplaying >Steve's arguments here, but I get why it's hard to summarize arguments >that you don't agree with. > >The way I would put the argument is that one of the critical goals of >Debian is to be a universal operating system that prioritizes its users >alongside free software, and implicit in that prioritization is that >Debian is intended to be a practical, real-world, usable operating system >for regular computers, not (solely) a research experiment or ideological >statement. And I would say that one of the motives of Steve's proposal >(or, at the least, one of my motives for agreeing with it) is that I think >we, some time ago, reached the point where dynamically loadable firmware >is necessary in normal cases for our users. This is the key point, exactly. I sincerely believe that Simon is *not* being dismissive of these needs here, but it *could* easily be read that way. ... >The reason why I'm saying this so bluntly is that I am concerned that your >wording is approaching the implication that the folks with concerns about >this proposal are principled and the folks supporting this proposal are, >well, less principled in some way, or are compromising their principles. >I don't believe I am compromising my principles; I believe I am upholding >*different* principles than you are, about building something that does >things concretely in the world and values that utility at least equally >with making ideological statements. My disagreement with you *is* a >disagreement of principles, not a matter of you being more willing to >stick with principles than I am. Nod. Believe me, I've agonised over raising this GR (or something like it) for several years before finally getting here. I know there is some soul-searching to be done, balancing the two priorities we identify in the SC: our users and free software. Each developer in the project will have their own position on this, and I'm immensely happy that we've had some healthy and respectful debate here. Thanks to everybody for that. >Also, to be clear, dropping the non-free installer is not on the ballot; >none of the options, including yours as you point out, say that. So I am >not worried that Debian is moving in this direction, and this is an >abstract discussion rather than something I think is likely. But after >reading your message a couple of times, it felt important to me to stress >that I don't feel like those who would prioritize DFSG freeness have a >monopoly on principles here. So... I *do* have concerns about fully advertising a non-free installer image that doesn't meet our stated principles. We've spent years asserting / pretending that non-free is not part of Debian, and we don't really advertise it much. Most people would never really care on their installed systems. However, I feel strongly that the non-free installer *has* to be handled differently. If not, we're choosing to fail on (some of) our principles. This is why I'm here with this GR after all. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James D. Nicoll
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