On Jan 12, 2004, at 12:57, Raul Miller wrote:
I hope developers in general are smart enough to handle this one. If
clause 5 is dropped, then obviously the edits for it will be, too.
So does this mean that the edits go on a separate ballot from his other
proposal?
I believe that is the plan.
If so, what does that mean if something other than exactly
this these two proposals win on one or the other of the ballots?
I think the idea is that we do one of them first and once that's done,
decide how to proceed.
If, for example, we were to drop SC 5, Andrew would drop his SC 5
changes in the editorial changes GR.
If we make significant editorial changes in the non-free ballot, and
that one comes before Andrew's editorial one, I'd assume he'd withdraw
his editorial changes ballot.
I'd strongly encourage people to keep proposals on the non-free ballot
germane: They should all concern Debian's support (or non-support) of
software that does not meet the DFSG.
I'd also strongly encourage people to keep proposals on the editorial
changes ballot germane: They should all concern wording changes with
little, if any, effect on the meaning of the document.
I think if we do that, the two should be fairly easy to reconcile.
[And, since Andrew hasn't been
willing to state what problems he's trying to solve, it may very well
be that this is fine from Andrew's point of view as well.]
I think Andrew considers non-free being on Debian's servers a problem
in and of itself. This is, I imagine, not a technical problem but a
political one to him.
As for the editorial changes, I think he (and Branden, myself, and many
others, who started and helped with those changes) believe that the
problem is that the Social Contract is not as clear and eloquent as it
could be. Historically, a lot of that was the result of the GFDL
flamewar on -legal about the definition of "software." Some people were
not clear it included documentation, but we received definitive
clarification from Bruce Perens. See
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200308/
msg00690.html>.
Actually, I believe some clarifications were discussed (strictly
speaking, in OT threads) on -legal.
