On Thu, Sep 28, 2000 at 12:52:02PM -0700, Seth Arnold wrote: > > To return to the crux of the biscuit, article 1 of the social contract says > > that commercial software will not be part of the "distribution", period. > > Five then says that we will offer commercial software via FTP, those > > concepts > > seem to be fundamentally at odds. > > Constitutionality aside, if non-free is removed from debian, I will miss > acroread and netscape and unzip. (I don't usually need zip, since > windows users can also grok .tar.gz with winzip)
unzip should be in main now - it's now got a free license. Without regard to constitutionality, I believe there are technical reasons why non-free should remain a little while longer. Netscape is the biggest of them at the moment since currently Mozilla is not ready to replace it. These are temporary. I personally wouldn't mind just seeing the mention of non-free removed from the social contract so we may do what we feel is morally correct given technical issues when the time comes without a chunk of the social contract tying our hands and forcing us to support non-free software indefinitely. > I imagine some other people might miss their rsa and idea modules for > gpg. (Which reminds me, why is the rsa module for gpg still in non-free?) And why are people still using gpg-rsaref, hmm? > Being the champions of free software doesn't always mean we have to be > extremists about it. :) That's debatable.. More and more a lot of people who actually care about free software are feeling that Debian has become apathetic toward it and are trying to push the other direction as hard as possible. I'm not interested in that and I already feel that now is not the time for John's proposal to pass. However, I have little belief that it WILL pass, regardless of the majority required. I don't even think John expects a simple majority vote would pass at this point (and he's somewhat disappointed by this..) I think I would be disappointed if the vote was overwhelmingly against as the (seemingly largely uninformed) public opinion has been. I _AM_ disappointed that our secretary has decided how this vote will be handled by fiat in a way that can best be described as ballot stacking in favor of his personal preferences and setting a dangerous precedent in which the secretary is essentially bound by no rules and has more authority over the project than its leader does. This ain't good. Far be it from me to advocate more red tape, but here's an example of where Debian's bureaucratic system designed to ensure that nobody is in complete control of the project without review is failing. The secretary can arbitrarily change the rules for a GR vote and the only way to appeal a decision made by the secretary is to have a GR vote ... Unfortunately, I think this also brings to light what is IMO a shortcoming of Wichert's leadership of the project. He hasn't even commented on this subject and has essentially taken no steps to do anything about it. Ignoring problems won't make them go away. This kind of thing has started to become a problem, IMO, since I haven't seen Wichert involve himself in any way with any controversial issues at all until they are essentially resolved. This GR is not one that Darren likes - that much is fairly evident from other postings he's made on similar subjects found in archives. I feel that as a result he's given it a second-class priority and is in fact actively trying to ensure that it's never voted on with this latest decision. John made his proposal, he got his seconds, he got several vocal detractors who don't like it, and he followed constitutional procedure to have his vote. Weeks and even months later, there is no vote and by the looks of it, there never will be. That ain't right. If it's going to fail, let it fail because the developers don't want to see the social contract so easily modified or because they don't like the proposal in general. Not because one person decides he wants the issue to die. -- Joseph Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> GnuPG key 1024D/DCF9DAB3 Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/) 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC The QuakeForge Project (http://quakeforge.net/) 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3 <dark> "Let's form the Linux Standard Linux Standardization Association Board. The purpose of this board will be to standardize Linux Standardization Organizations."
