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I second this proposed foundation document:
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Transition Guide
A working guide to achieve the transition for changes in Foundation documents
containing explanations and Rationale, and defining
guidelines for future transitions
The Social Contract represents the core commitments of the Project.
The Social Contract leaves its marks in many ways; it is deeply
intertwined with all parts of the Project. Potentially, any change to
the Social Contract has major ramifications, and may require a period
of potentially deep changes to the roots of the Project before it can
come into compliance with the changed Contract.
Meeting our commitments as described in the Social Contact is an
ongoing process. Whenever we change these commitments, we may need an
interval of time before we can approach compliance. Unless we shut
down the Project completely - abandoning users and our developers -
the regular activities of the Project must continue while we work
towards compliance.
There is precedent for a gap between ratifying a change to the
foundation documents of the Project and implementing dictates of that
document; when the Project first accepted the Social Contract and the
Debian Free Software Guidelines, there was an interval before we came
into compliance with those then-new documents. Indeed, a minor version
was released just days after the Debian Free Software Guidelines were
accepted, and this release by no means complied with the new
commitments.
We also continued to support older non-complying releases, and did not
make them unavailable to our users.
The binding principle here is that we have to balance the needs of our
users and the need to make Debian strictly free. As one developer has
said:
In my opinion, the needs of the free software community take
precedence in the context of adopting new packages, in the setting
of release goals, in our choices about infrastructure and
philosophy, and of course in the context of any development work
we do.
In my opinion, the needs of our users take precedence in the
context of security fixes, in the context of support for packages
and systems we've released, and in the context of the quality of
our work.
We, the Debian Project, do so affirm this judgmen. While we are
working towards complying with a change in the goals or identity of
the Project, or towards compliance with any change to a foundation
document, the needs of our users will be catered to. This may mean
that for a limited time, Debian will not be compliant with the new
Social Contract.
Whenever a change to our foundation documents takes place, the
activities required to provide ongoing and proactive support for the
Debian user community shall continue. This includes, but is not
necessarily limited to, providing security updates for
previously-released versions of Debian, providing point-release
updates to previously-released versions of Debian, preparing for the
next (compliant) release of Debian, actually releasing the current
non-compliant version of Debian if such a release is imminent (as well
as any further updates to that version of Debian), and providing all
the Project's infrastructure such as bug-tracking and mailing lists.
In the specific case of General Resolution 2004_003, since that
release currently in preparation, code named "Sarge", is very close to
release, and the previously released version is quite out of date, our
commitment to our users dictates that the "Sarge" release should go on
as planned - even while we are in the process of reaching compliance
with the new Social Contract. This exemption for "Sarge" applies to
security releases and point releases as well.
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