[Fsf-Debian] No response?

[Paul van der Vlis]

Op 03-08-12 17:46, Daniel Kahn Gillmor schreef:
> On 08/03/2012 05:19 AM, Paul van der Vlis wrote:
>> First step could be to move everything from non-free and contrib to a
>> repository of another organization, let's call it "debian-nonfree" (but
>> we could also choose a name without "Debian" in it).
> 
> section 5 of the Debian Social Contract explicitly says, under the
> heading "Works that do not meet our free software standards":
> 
>>> We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of works that do 
>>> not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created 
>>> "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our archive for these works. The 
>>> packages in these areas are not part of the Debian system, although 
>>> they have been configured for use with Debian. We encourage CD 
>>> manufacturers to read the licenses of the packages in these areas and 
>>> determine if they can distribute the packages on their CDs. Thus, 
>>> although non-free works are not a part of Debian, we support their use 
>>> and provide infrastructure for non-free packages (such as our bug 
>>> tracking system and mailing lists).
> 
> http://www.debian.org/social_contract
> 
>> I think only Debian DD's and DM's should be welcome as a member of this
>> organization, so the quality of the packages in the repository is the
>> same as in Debian.
> 
> Every Debian Developer and Debian Maintainer has agreed to the DSC.
> What you're proposing seems to strike out this final clause, or perhaps
> (more minimally) to replace "support their use and provide
> infrastructure" to "cooperate with nonfree.org, which supports their use
> and provides infrastructure".  Changes to the Social Contract happen
> only as a result of a General Resolution.  This is doable, but it needs
> to be pretty well-justified.

When Debian moves the non-free parts to nonfree.org, this is a form of
support too.

>> In the statutes of the organization we could write that the organization
>> will do what Debian decides.
> 
> So the net change of this proposal is now that there need to be two sets
> of infrastructure maintained, and there would be feature parity with
> what currently exists.  

True.

> Who is going to maintain the new set of infrastructure?

I hope the same people who are doing the infrastructure of Debian.

>> This should be only a little change, so the goal is not directly to come
>> on the FSF-free list, only to make steps in this direction and to make
>> Debian 100% open source.
> 
> Debian is already 100% free software.  

In Debian there is a contrib and a non-free section. This is officially
not a part of Debian, but in reality it is (in my opinion).

I don't want to change that, but I want to "move it away" to another
organisation.

> Does it need to be open source too? :)

Yes.

> In your followup, you write:
> 
>> In the beginning we could be 'friendly' to such a nonfree organization.
>> E.g. make a disabled line in /etc/apt/sources.list and make references
>> to it on debian.org etc. But it could be a release goal for Jessie +1 to
>> remove those references.
> 
> Currently, i believe a default install does not add the non-free apt
> repo to sources.list unless the user explicitly requests it.  So you're
> actually proposing *adding* a reference to a non-free repo in the
> default sources.list (albeit a commented-out one)?
> 
> i'm not sure i see what the gain is here, but i can certainly see the
> extra labor it sets up.  So it seems like a bad tradeoff to me.  can you
> help me understand why it might be a better tradeoff than it appears?

What I want is to make a user-friendly migration. You can do that with a
commented-out line in sources.list, but you can do that on other ways too.

With regards,
Paul van der Vlis.


-- 
Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer, Groningen
http://www.vandervlis.nl