Re: Political climate of Debian
I'm currently somewhat overwhelmed by this whole mass introduction to
Debian politics (something that a month ago I didn't even know
*existed*, at least to this extent), but since there seems to be
lobbying for newbie responses, here goes nothing. <g>
Erinn Clark wrote:
[NB: If you've been around Debian for a while and/or have contributed to some
of these decisions, please read the bottom of the mail before replying.]
So, to the relative Debian newbies to the list, I'm curious what your
opinon is about:
* The impending Social Contract changes
If you're uninformed about these, a basic summary is that last year,
there was a GR (general resolution) which decided to change the SC.
These changes were considered editorial, but once they go into effect,
they will basically change the way Debian deals with non-free "stuff",
where "stuff" can be anything from binary firmware to maybe even stuff
like image files, depending on who you ask. Once this GR passed, there
was another one proposed to either defer changes to post-Sarge or to
revert the decision -- as you can see, the changes were deferred instead.
More reading can be found in the debian-vote archives from April of last
year as well as debian-devel of the same month. If someone has trimmed
mboxes of these, that would be very helpful -- I've got
debian-devel-200404 which is just all over the place and therefore not
trimmed at all[1].
If nobody minds, what exactly does this entail? Something that many see
as negative for non-free "stuff," I assume? (glanced at the mbox, but it
*is* huge, heh)
* GFDL non-freeness
Another GR which I don't remember being around for, but basically the
GFDL isn't considered DFSG-free either to the chagrin or joy of some
people. Debian has a position statement[2].
I briefly read over the DFSG, and it seems to me that, as documentation
is generally included with packages (though I could be wrong with this -
by "documentation," does that mean man pages, or other additional
documentation?), then it would make the most sense that all material
distributed in packages should adhere to the DFSG - code, docs, et al.
I have *not* read the GFDL (just scanned over it briefly), but would say
that if there's really no reason that it *shouldn't* be compatible with
the DFSG, then advocating to get it changed so that it does seems like a
good thing.
If it's not too much to ask, what exactly about the GFDL makes it not
work with the DFSG? I'll gladly do a more intensive reading if needed,
but if someone has a quick summary, then that would be extremely awesome. :)
I actually like what I've seen of the Debian legal team working with
Creative Commons & Co. to improve licenses and such - love the helping
within the larger community to make things better.
* Debian's relevance in the face of slow releases and derivatives
Many people are concerned Debian will become less and less relevant if we
don't get our act together and start releasing faster. This has lead to a
lot of in-fighting and a general bad vibe about "competition" from some
people. OTOH, some people see it as a net positive or irrelevant to what
we do.
This is a tough one. I've personally gotten so many conflicting opinions
that I don't know if I'm sure exactly *what* to think.
However, I really, really don't take the knee-jerk "x is dying" that
seems to pop up whenever something even remotely like this pops up.
That said, the huge volume of stuff that Debian deals with is simply
amazing. Right now, I'm inclined to say that while releasing faster
would be nice, if it's not possibly then it's not possible, or at least
not realistically. Stable really is, well, stable. It's known for being
so. And it's still supported, security and all. I haven't run into many
problems running Sid as an ordinary workstation user, either.
* The new release strategy
I would be surprised if anyone missed the discussions about this due to
its recent discussion, but you can read the original mail[3] and the
ensuing discussion[4] (warning: *very* long thread).
I wouldn't doubt that I may be missing facts here, so I'll try and avoid
jumping to conclusions. And probably just bombard with questions for the
time being. Question: is this "official" currently? I seem to remember
it not being so.
Also, how exactly does package management for the support of all these
architectures work? Do maintainers need to compile their packages on
every architecture (this seems a little ludicrous to require package
maintainers to actually have access to everything, so I assume that
there is some other explanation)?
* The general idea of pragmatism vs. purity
Debian seems (to me) somewhat divided over this issue. There are people
who think it's entirely practical -- and indeed, our mission -- to be
extremely pure. There are also people that feel we are sacrificing our
users' ability to use the OS due to the hoops they'll have to jump
through in order to get a working system, or that we've simply lost our
minds.
IMO, purism is a good thing for the most part, as far as Debian is
concerned. Having fairly strict guidelines causes Debian to be an active
advocate in having others follow completely free software guidelines.
However, if there are no free alternatives, I don't see a problem with
some leeway being given, especially in regard to hardware support and
things that make use of the OS unduly difficult for an end user).
Somebody wrote something regarding this in a previous response to this
thread, but I don't really feel like digging through each mail to find
the right one at the moment.
Hopefully that was helpful, and along the lines of what you're looking
for. Feel free to correct any mistakes that I may have made. There's so
much more to learn about than I think I could have ever imagined. <grin>
--
blog: http://frisia.middle-earth.us/
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