the importance of non-free software has greatly decreased since the
founding of the project; and
But, unfortunately, the FSF releases large amounts of non-free software
(documentation) which many people would consider important. Eventually
it will be replaced or relicensed, but this will take a while.
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.
Of course, this means that the FSF-provided documentation will mostly
not be available in Debian. *Provided Debian decides to actually FOLLOW
its Social Contract after Sarge, that is.)
I can't support any proposal to remove non-free until the issue of
non-free material in main is dealt with properly. Which it has *not*
been. I encourage everyone to shelve these proposals and deal with the
problem of making 'main' free first. :-P
