I am not a DD (yet), and this is not a GR proposal (yet). However, I'm
requesting comments on it, and maybe it'll be more tenable to people
more reluctant to remove non-free.
PROPOSAL 1
-------- -
Whereas,
the Debian Project exists to create a distribution of free software;
many Developers do not consider it moral or equitable to provide,
freely, our project's resources to projects who are unwilling or
unable to provide their code freely to the public;
the importance of non-free software has greatly decreased since the
founding of the project; and
outside groups have been quite able to provide well-integrated
software no harder to obtain than that from Debian's own mirror
network:
It is resolved that,
After the release of Sarge, Debian shall not continue to include
non-free in "testing" or "unstable." Sarge shall be the last
release of Debian to include a non-free section. We will continue
to support the non-free section of Sarge for as long as the free
section of it. People who still require non-free software after
that are encouraged to set up their own distribution network for
it.
To effect this, a new version of the Social Contract with only clauses
1 through 4 is hereby issued.
The major effective difference in this proposal is that Sarge will
still include non-free, in order to give people plenty of time (3
years?) to migrate to free alternatives or find different hosting for
their non-free packages.
Note that nothing in here changes our promise to "support our users who
develop and run non-free software on Debian", which is in clause 1 of
the Social Contract.
