[Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox on a free operating system

[Esteban Ordóñez]

Hello Diederik.

El 2022-12-09 06:06, Diederik de Haas escribió:
> On Friday, 9 December 2022 00:12:22 CET Esteban Ordóñez wrote:
>> People in this list could ask Debian authorities
>> to revert the inclusion of nonfree firmware.
> 
> There is no "Debian authorities".
> There are *members* of the Debian project with voting rights, and those are
> the Debian Developers.

Debian developers are those who develop Debian.  Debian only accepts
some people as developers, not all those who develop Debian.  And of
those only about 5% vote.  Those are the authorities.  Not voting does
not mean to want to be represented by those who vote.  Those who vote,
either are willing to give up their time or have some corporation pay
them to represent them.  Whatever the case, there is no democracy.  You
must convince the elite.

> And they have voted in a General Resolution to first enable 'non-free' and then
> reaffirmed that in another GR: https://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002

Yes.  That is why Debian has been nonfree.  Debian used to say that it
was free because its main repository had all free software.  Now Debian
is in fact nonfree, even by its own definitions.

> So what you asked for has already been done.

It has not been asked to revert after 2004.  Not even by the authorized
voters.  Less so by the users.  I doubt that the users will ask for that
decision to be reverted, unless they are informed more and more about
freedom.

>> most Debian developers are not the ones who make the decisions.
> 
> Actually they are. Debian Developers are the ones with voting rights and the
> (major) decisions are made through a GR vote.
> 
> You want to vote too? Do the work to become a Debian Developer.
> That still only gives you 1 vote and therefor does not mean you (always) get
> what you want. You'd need to convince enough of your fellow DDs to vote with
> you or the proposal you want.

The only thing that is important is that the truth be told.  This double
talk makes people think that Debian is freedom.  It is not.  It would be
better that it be said.  Then it would be OK.  I would have liked to
know that information before getting involved with Ubuntu and its also
misguiding campaign to confuse freedom with gratuity.  People would be
subjugated and divided by nonfree software.  But at least they would
know they are.

So it is an important issue for Freedombox.  Deciding to be based on
Debian without nonfree software would mean not including the nonfree
firmware.  If the user decided to include it, that would be the user's
decision.  But that would not involve Freedombox's collaboration to
subjugate the user.  Telling people that they should opt for freedom
does very little.  Setting the example is the only way.  Freedombox can
do this.

This discussion has been of great information to me.  I did not know
about the Condorcet method for voting or that Australia has used it for
100 years!  I do think that it is a better system for voting, barring my
comments above.  Exchanging information is a manvelous source of
cross-polination, especially when there is disagreement.

If this is an issue that you do not want to discuss, it is OK with me. 
But if you respond, that means you want to continue.  If someone else is
interested in discussing this, I can provide more information and ask
more questions too, if that is useful.

Greetings,

Quiliro