The general resolution to abolish non-free is flawed in a number of ways.
It weakens the social contract ============================== The social contract is one of the foundations on which Debian users base their expectations for Debian's future directions. Up until now, Debian users could rely on having both a fully functional and free distribution available to them and a number of non-free components that they may require. While we will, with the proposed changes, continue to acknowledge our users' needs for non-free software, we will no longer make any attempt to satisfy them. Futhermore, the success of this proposal would set a precedent that the Debian developers may, by a simple majority vote, modify the social contract as they wish, without making any attempt to determine if this is truly in the interests of their users, or even the free software community at large. It offers no tangible benefits ============================== This proposal is purely negative: it seeks to remove all the functionality that the non-free component offers Debian users, without offering anything that will directly improve a user's experience of the Debian distribution, or make participation in the Debian project easier or more productive. It creates both immediate and long-term tangible drawbacks ========================================================== The initial result of this proposal will be to cease updating non-free software which will make maintenance and installation of contrib packages significantly more difficult, since there will be no reliable site for the non-free software many contrib packages depend upon. In the longer term, it will make it impossible to assure users that contrib software can be installed and is usable. Similarly, it will make it impossible for Debian to assure its users that particular items of non-free software will be available. It is commonly held that this change will make non-free software for Debian no harder to find, but this is a best case scenario assuming a single archive of comparable quality to Debian's is set up. If multiple archives are setup, or the archives are of lower quality (eg they do not follow a technical policy document, eg, or they do not check uploads for authenticity), using non-free software on a Debian system will become significantly more difficult. It's premature ============== non-free software is still necessary: there is still free software based on it (as evidenced by contrib), and many of our users still require it. The premise of section five of the social contract still holds: some of our users do still require the use of programs that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Which programs are required and have no free replacements has changed and continues to change, but the fact that some programs are still required has not. It forks the Debian infrastructure ================================== The Debian infrastructure (the mirror network, the BTS, the archive, the keyring, the new-maintainer procedure, technical policy, decision making policy) is well established and instrumental in making Debian as maintainable as it is, and will be necessary to maintain non-free software at a similar level. But since Debian will no longer distribute non-free software, much of this infrastructure will become unavailable: the mirror network and the archive directly, the BTS will require modifications and extra ongoing maintenance to be useful for packages Debian refuses to distribute, a seperate new-maintainer system and decision making hierarchy will be needed for maintainers that do not wish to package free software as well as non-free software, concerns raised by non-free packages (such as naming conflicts) will tend not be addressed by Debian and must thus be worked around instead of fixed. As such, those maintainers who wish to continue to support non-free software will need to duplicate many of these items, either incompletely, leading to more difficult maintenace and a poorer user experience, or completely, leading to significant duplicated and wasted effort. Further to this, many of the rationales proposed for this change are also flawed on a number of matters: Confusion between the Debian project and the Debian distribution ================================================================ It is undeniably true that the Debian GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd distributions solely contain free software. This does not, however, imply that the Debian project is exclusively limited to distributing free software, and indeed the Debian project has distributed non-free software and has codified that practice in its social contract. Distributing non-free software is not evidence of hypocrisy or compromised ideals, it is a corollary of the needs of our distribution's users, and the project's support for those users. Confusion between the Debian project and Debian developers ========================================================== The social contract does not dictate what individual developers must work on, only what the project as a whole will try to achieve. Just as individual developers are not required to only ever write free software, individual developers are similarly not required to work on non-free software or assist with its infrastructure. With or without the commitment to non-free software contained in the social contract, developers may completely ignore non-free software, without decreasing their contribution to the distribution or the project in any way. The effects of this proposal on the free software community =========================================================== Debian, and Debian developers, have long been advocates of free software, by writing new free software, by improving existing free software, and by encouraging existing non-free software to change its license terms to a free alternative. Some supporters of this proposal see it as a continuation of this latter trend in that it will make authoring non-free software less attractive if it is not distributed by Debian. They neglect to mention that Debian is already highly successful at encouraging non-free software authors to relicense, that distributing software as non-free rather than part of the distribution itself is already a successful disincentive, that often it is the maintainer of the non-free package who initiates the discussion even after it's packaged for non-free, and that seeing that a package is non-free often in and of itself encourages users to look for a free replacement. Respectfully submitted, aj -- Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG encrypted mail preferred. ``We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and working code.'' -- Dave Clark
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