[Fsf-Debian] Silent here

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud odyx at debian.org
Fri Nov 23 14:22:55 UTC 2012


Hi Paul,

Le mercredi, 21 novembre 2012 14.39:02, Paul van der Vlis a écrit :
> Very silent here.
> 
> In my opinion it's not a good idea to make Debian FSF-free at the
> moment. But what we should do is to make Debian "almost FSF-free" and
> make some steps in the good direction.
> 
> In my opinion we could do the following:
> 
> 1. Move the non-free and the contrib repository from the debian.org
> domain to another domain name, under control of DD's.

Given our Social Contract, paragraph 5 [SC5]:

"      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."

I would argue that moving "contrib" and "non-free" out of Debian 
infrastructure would need a Social Contract amendment, thereby a GR.

(If you read it to the letter, it could not be strictly needed, as one could 
read "we have created … in our archive" as a historical fact more than a 
binding point. Yet I think such a change has to go through the body of 
developers).

> 2. Change the installer in a manner that no non-free firmware is advised
> anymore, but that you still can use it.

… besides on hardware where you can't.

We currently have both documentation and code that permit one user that 
chooses so to use firmwares (e.g.). Removing both these is IMHO controversial 
and should probably also go through a GR.

The "firmware" question is also a slightly different one than the whole "non-
free" problem: some firmwares are as freely distributed as CPU microcode, 
where the latter is an absolute requirement to have an OS run. My feeling here 
is that there ''might'' be consensus around making a new "firmware" archive 
area, specifically for pieces of code not executed by CPUs but needed to make 
them run.

> 3. Remove recommendations or suggestions to non-free software in packages.

See the tech-ctte discussion: http://bugs.debian.org/681419 From the non-
debated part of the statement: 

"	The Debian Policy Manual states (§2.2.1) that packages in main
     "must not require or recommend a package outside of main for
     compilation or execution".  Both "Depends: package-in-non-free" and
     "Recommends: package-in-non-free" clearly violate this requirement."

So these issues are serious bugs already. For part not addresses by the tech-
ctte bug, I think you won't find consensus to drop non-free Suggests.

> What we cannot do at the moment is remove non-free and contrib
> completely, and we also cannot remove all documentation about non-free
> software and firmware.

I think even moving them out of debian.org realm would need a GR, both because 
it's IMHO a change of our foundation documents and because it's a sufficiently 
important change to warrant an explicit (n)ack from the body of developers.

(And that's without talking about the infrastructure changes to make it clear 
on the Debian side while the mirrors (that are not all under our 
responsibility), will keep on putting main/contrib/non-free contents on the 
same harddisks, making the whole exercise quite moot IMHO.)

Cheers,

OdyX



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