Dear all,
It seems the "100% free" vs "social contract" debate has reemerged...
Like last time it happened I do believe that what RMS requests can quite
easily be accommodated within our current structure. After a summary I'll
propose the compromise and then explain why I think it is the best we can
do.
SUMMARY.
The issue is that the Official Debian Home Page must (as I interpret the
Social Contract's item 5) mention that Debian is more than Official Debian
but should preferably do so without recommending the non-official stuff in
any way (since our commitment in the Social Contract's item 1 is a 100%
free OS).
PROPOSAL.
Web page:
The first paragraph ("What is Debian?") if the main debian web page at
<http://debian.org> is changed to the following (only the first and last
paragraphs have changed essentially):
<H2>
<IMG src="debian-logo.png" align=right>
This is the Official Debian Home Page
</H2>
<P>Through this page you can obtain the Official Debian distribution, a
fully functional <A href="intro/free">100% free</A> operating system (OS)
for your computer.</P>
<P>An operating system is the set of basic programs
and utilities that make your computer run. At the core of an operating
system is the kernel. The kernel is the most fundamental program on the
computer, does all the basic housekeeping and lets you start other programs.
Debian is kernel independent. It currently uses the
<A href="http://www.linux.org/";>Linux</A> kernel but work is
in progress to provide Debian for other kernels, using
<A href="http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html";>Hurd</A>.</P>
<P>Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds
and supported by (probably over 1000) programmers worldwide.</P>
<P>Hurd is a collection of servers that run on top of a microkernel (such as
Mach) to implement different features. Hurd is free software produced by the
GNU project.</P>
<P>A large part of the basic tools that fill out the operating system come
from the <A href="http://www.gnu.org/";>GNU project</A>; hence the names:
GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd . These tools are also free. Of course,
what people want is application software: programs to help them get what
they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to
playing games to writing more software. Debian comes with over 2250
packages (precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy
installation and upgrade on your machine) -- all
<A href="intro/free">free</A>.</P>
<P>The goals of Debian are outlined in our
<A href="http://debian.org/social_contract";>Social Contract</A>.
In particular the Debian package format is completely open and supports
integration of non-free software onto Debian machines for those that need
it (and can live with the restrictions on distribution that it imposes).
Non-free software that has already been integrated by Debian developers
can be found on the
<A href="http://non-official.debian.org";>non-official</A> server.
The official server needs to have a "Packages" page that does not refer to
non-free software, of course.
The server non-official.debian.org is then created with the start
<H2>
<IMG src="non-free-logo.gif" align=right>
This is the Debian Non-official Home Page
</H2>
<P>This page gives access to the Non-official Debian system which
consists of the <A href="http://debian.org";>Official Debian</A> system
plus packages with a license that does not conform to the
<A href="http://debian.org/social_contract";>Debian Free Software
Guidelines (DFSG)</A>. Thus you should be aware that software on this
server come with arbitrary restrictions that may make your use of it
problematic. We provide the software anyway to ensure that the packages
are integrated well with the Debian system such that Debian is useable to
the largest possible number of users as required by our
<A href="http://debian.org/social_contract";>Social Contract</A>.</P>
Apt:
The apt package is delivered with a sources.list containing
deb http://debian.org/debian stable main
A different package "apt-non-free" is put in the non-free archive with the
sources.list
deb http://debian.org/debian stable non-free
deb http://non-official.debian.org/debian stable non-free
(or whatever, depending on the destiny of contrib and non-us). It should,
of course, conflict with and provide apt.
RATIONALE.
The main issue in the discussion is that RMS and the FSF wants to be able
to show-case Official Debian as a 100% free OS as the Social Contract's
item 1 promises. This seems to conflict with item 5 in the Social Contract
that obliges us to support non-free software "configured for Debian".
The above compromise for an "Official Debian" home page mentions non-free
software in the last paragraph but explicitly does *not* recommend its use
(if this is not sufficiently clear from the formulation I will be happy to
hear even more discrete ones :).
I do feel that not mentioning non-free software at all would make the
Official Debian home page violate our social contract.
What do you think?
Best,
Kristoffer
--
Kristoffer Høgsbro Rose, phd, prof.associé <http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~krisrose>
addr. LIP, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, F-69364 Lyon 7
phone +33(0)4 7272 8642, fax +33(0)4 7272 8080 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
pgp f-p: A4D3 5BD7 3EC5 7CA2 924E D21D 126B B8E0 <[EMAIL PROTECTED],tug}.org>
