I concur with the analysis of the components I have skipped. In all the cases where Raul has included changes that I have not, I think that they are either wrong or pointless. All the ones that I have not covered in this mail fall into the "pointless" category, and are mostly typographical changes which are not corrections.
I have one or two changes from the original social contract that Raul does not, and I think they are significant. I find Raul's proposal to be entirely without merit when compared to my editorial proposal. I find Raul's proposal to be entirely unrelated when compared to my non-free proposal; it contains no changes which are relevant to the issue of whether or not to keep non-free. On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 12:17:22PM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: > Raul Miller | Andrew Suffield > 1. Debian will remain 100% free | 1. Debian will remain 100% free > software | > > Pretty much the same thing. Slight wording difference. I have systematically eliminated all references to "software", because some people disagree about what it means. Most of the changes to clause 1 were to accomodate this. [Skipping all further coverage of this change] > Raul Miller | Andrew Suffield > In order to accommodate these users, | We have created > we have created "contrib" and | "contrib" and "non-free" areas in > "non-free" areas in our internet | our archive for these works. > archive. | > > Raul adds in a transition phrase and the word "internet" (Raul: isn't > Internet capitalized?). I don't think this is all that different. I consider Raul's version to be a duplication of the mistake which I eliminated. I don't know why he changed it from the original "FTP archive" at all; his version has the same problem as the original (in that it is a partial description that may cease to be accurate in the future). > Raul Miller | Andrew Suffield > The software in "non-free" | The > satisfies some, but not all, of our | packages in these areas are not part > guidelines | of the Debian system, although they > | have been configured for use with > | Debian. > > These are fairly different. Raul does not include the statement that these > are not part of Debian. Doesn't leaving that out cause a problem when > compared to clause 1? > > Also, I'm not sure that software in non-free has to satisfy any of the > guidelines. Certainly not DFSG 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10. I'm not sure > why they'd have to satisfy 7 or 9, either, provided it is still legal for > Debian to distribute it. So this may be a material change. I think Raul's version is completely nuts, for these two reasons. > Raul Miller | Andrew Suffield > and we do not guarantee | We encourage CD > all software in the non-free area | manufacturers to read the licenses > may be distributed in other ways. | of the packages in these areas and > | determine if they can distribute the > | packages on their CDs. > > Raul's wording covers more than CD manufacturers. Raul's wording also > seems to suggest that we guarantee the distributability of software in > main. These aren't the same thing at all. Raul has removed the original sentence entirely, and added a fairly useless disclaimer (we've never guaranteed that; why do we need to make it a part of the social contract that we don't guarantee it?). The semantic difference is that we no longer encourage CD manufacturers to include non-free. I can't imagine why a non-free supporter would want this. > Raul Miller | Andrew Suffield > For those who need to run software | Thus, > we do not distribute, free or | although non-free works are not a > non-free, we support worthy | part of Debian, we support their use > application binary interface | and provide infrastructure for > standards and namespace management | non-free packages (such as our bug > standards. Additionally, we will | tracking system and mailing lists). > work to find, package and support | > free alternatives to non-free | > software so people who use only free | > software can work with users of | > non-free software. | > > Both Raul and Andrew affirm (again) that we support the use of non-free > works. Raul additionaly addes in that we will support ABI and namespace > standards (like the LSB, FHS, etc.) Also, Raul adds in that we will work > towards free alternatives. Raul has added several strong guarantees of effort on the part of Debian, which do not presently exist. I strongly oppose these. As a maintainer with no packages in non-free, I refuse to do any of these things. The constitution (3.1.1) trumps the social contract here, so these statements are non-operative - they do not describe what developers do, and they cannot compel developers to do these things. The current clause 5 of the social contract accurately describes my position, as somebody who has little or nothing to do with non-free. Raul's proposed amendment does not. I think that a majority of the developers will be in a similar position. We only accepted the LSB on the proviso that it would not interfere with other packages - that it could be handled entirely by the people who were interested in supporting LSB applications. I object to any proposal to expand it beyond this. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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