Debian: too free?
Whether intended or not, the new wording has already claimed a big victim: the upcoming "sarge" release. The next major release of Debian is already far later than had been hoped - but that is not particularly surprising for a Debian release. What is surprising is that release manager Anthony Towns has let it be known that the new social contract will delay things further. The sarge release, as it stands now, does not conform to the newly-reworded social contract. Given the overt nature of the changes to the contract, Anthony does not believe he can just look the other way and release regardless. Most Debian developers would appear to agree with his interpretation of the contract.
In practical terms, this means that a lot of changes will have to be made to sarge before it can go out. The GFDL-licensed documentation (for small packages, like the C library) will have to be removed. Support for hardware requiring binary-only firmware downloads will be removed. The installer will have to be rewritten so that people who happen to have the firmware for their (otherwise unsupported) hardware can install the system. It has also been noted that a lot of fonts may have to be removed from Debian as well. All in all, Anthony figures that, with these changes, there is no chance that sarge will be released this year.
The Debian Project, in other words, is in a bit of a bind. The current Debian stable release is approaching a truly geriatric state; few users are much interested in GNOME 1.4, KDE 2.2, XFree86 4.1, Mozilla 1.0, Netscape 4.77 (!), gcc 3.0, or the 2.2 kernel at this point (though, in fairness, there are 2.4 kernels available for woody as well). This release has done its time; it should not be expected to last into 2005. Somehow, if Debian is to remain relevant to anybody beyond those using the (occasionally scary but always highly useful) unstable version, it is going to have to find a way around this problem and get a new release out.
One possibility is this new general resolution which is tentatively set for a vote in the second half of May. This resolution would create a "sarge exception" by revoking the social contract change - but only until the beginning of September, when the new language would, once again take effect. This resolution would enable the project to get a release out (and, incidentally, impose a deadline on that release) under the old rules. Subsequent distributions could then be purged of offending materials at relative leisure.
In the longer term, Debian is going to have to come to a conclusion about where its priorities truly lie. Despite the incredible progress made over the last 20 years, creating a 100% free system is still a very hard thing to do. Most of us will never have the source to the firmware running in our network controllers. Maybe someday we will have 100% free fonts, but that is not this day. There will always be disagreements over which licenses are truly free - as witnessed by the fact that Debian is fighting over documentation licenses that have passed muster with Richard Stallman. Any distribution which insists on 100% purity is going to have a hard time producing a system that is actually useful in the near future.
As Ted Ts'o puts it, this episode may be a fortunate thing in that it will force a debate over the project's goals. If Debian is really about making the best possible system, the developers will eventually get back to that task.
Others see things differently, however:
In other words, the social contract change, its aftermath, and the
philisophical differences behind it
risk creating a fork in the Debian distribution. One might argue that
this fork has already happened; look at UserLinux, for example. Such a
fork would be an unfortunate thing; the Debian Project has been a
technological and philosophical leader of the community for many years.
One can only hope that Debian will figure out how to reconcile its goals
and continue in that role well into the future.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 1:47 UTC (Thu)
by dbharris (guest, #19820)
[Link] (7 responses)
2) The GNU Free Documentation License didn't "pass muster with Richard Stallman" - he wrote it. It's a terrible license, almost nobody aside from RMS himself likes it, including most of the FSF membership. Last I heard, they were in the process of rewriting it. Again, check back in a week and see if you don't want to take the pithy comment dismissing all of Debian's concerns back. (Here's a hint: read section 2, paragraph 1, sentence 2 and tell me if you'd feel comfortable distributing a GFDL document in a way which precluded everybody else on the planet from accessing it in-transit. Such as over plaintext, non-password-enabled HTTP, which is running on an IP network which probably goes to some effort to make sure that people can't randomly grab other people's data. Let alone storing a copy of the document on an encrypted disk or transferred over HTTPS or even plaintext HTTP but from an area of the site which is password-protected.)
Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:17 UTC (Thu)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (6 responses)
2) I released an entire book under the GFDL, I know what it says. I did not dismiss anybody's concerns; I have, in fact, come to agree with your opinion of the GFDL. LDD3 will be released under a different license. My point, simply, is that people disagree over what makes a "free" license. I don't believe that will change anytime soon.
I do believe the whole episode is newsworthy; this community is still trying to grope its way toward an understanding of what it really wants, and the current Debian episode is just one step on the way there. How could that not be interesting?
Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:32 UTC (Thu)
by dbharris (guest, #19820)
[Link] (1 responses)
I think AJ's message was sensationalistic, and I believe this article is an extension of that. Eight of nine paragraphs was devoted to describing how this will affect Debian and its releases, when by the time it's all done, chances are that it won't. Especially the mention of a fork. Nobody has brought up any such thing, and UserLinux is an initiative by Bruce Perens who hasn't been active in Debian for years (and it's worth noting that he was involved in creating the origial Social Contract, which was still in place when he started UserLinux :). As far as the GFDL is concerned, I think saying things or quoting like "as witnessed by the fact that Debian is fighting over documentation licenses that have passed muster with Richard Stallman" and "If instead, it turns out there are significant numbers of people who believe their participation in Debian is really more about proving that they are Holier Than Stallman" is implicitly implying that the GFDL is the kind of license people would expect from the FSF, when it's proven to be quite the opposite as you yourself have said. Your reply to my post seems at odds with the article itself.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 9:16 UTC (Thu)
by jdthood (guest, #4157)
[Link]
Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:48 UTC (Thu)
by piman (guest, #8957)
[Link] (3 responses)
Also, Netscape 4.77, as a piece of non-free software, is not part of Debian woody.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:53 UTC (Thu)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (2 responses)
Hmm...if you go to the Debian stable packages list, you find Netscape listed. Sure, it says "non-free," and your computer will transparently get it from a different directory on the server, but it sure looks like part of the distribution to anybody who doesn't know better. There's a nice "download" button right there on the packages.debian.org server....
Posted Apr 29, 2004 3:03 UTC (Thu)
by piman (guest, #8957)
[Link]
Also, non-free isn't added by default to your sources.list, so it's not quite "transparently". Actually in sarge, it's (so far) not even asked about at all. Mostly because of the poor quality of all the packages in non-free.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 5:32 UTC (Thu)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link]
Hmm...if you go to the Debian stable packages list, you find Netscape listed. Sure, it says "non-free," and your computer will transparently get it from a different directory on the server, but it sure looks like part of the distribution to anybody who doesn't know better. There's a nice "download" button right there on the packages.debian.org server.... For what it's worth, I agree. But the majority of people who voted to retain the non-free section of the Debian archives apparently feel that the distinction is clear enough. It may be that, collectively, Debian is attempting to manage a Solomonic bargain between these competing interests. After all, if anything blacklisted from main due to licensing or missing-source-code problems can come gently to rest in non-free, and it's just as trivial to retrieve that stuff from there as it was from main, perhaps both the "puritans" (Debian will ship only Free Software!) and the "completists" (Debian will ship everything we possibly can!) will be satisfied. Perhaps... ;-)
Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:56 UTC (Thu)
by gavino (guest, #16214)
[Link] (3 responses)
The Aust. Democrats work in the shadows of the big parties, ready to take over in case the dominant parties of the Australian political landscape - the Australian Liberal Party and the Australian Labour Party - somehow take the wrong direction. When the Australian Democrats hold the balance of power (ie they can side with either Labour or Liberal to form a majority vote on a particular issue) they have the power to 'keep the bastards honest'. I see Debian in a similar role. Having Debian there, possibly in the background if not in the foreground, means that no big distros can ever take the greater GNU/Linux system down a propriatary path. ie creating a dominant distribution that relies on propietary parts, leading to vendor lock in. Keep keeping the software world honest Debian - just don't lose your relevance in doing this. Otherwise Fedora will rule this role and you will slip into obscurity. My vote would be to get Sarge out, *then* get to work on complying with the new social contract, because to have political impact you need relevance. If a debian developer is alone in the woods and there is no-one there to hear his social contract, does he make a sound? OK now I'm being facetious :P
Posted Apr 29, 2004 5:52 UTC (Thu)
by davidw (guest, #947)
[Link]
Posted Apr 29, 2004 13:44 UTC (Thu)
by mbp (subscriber, #2737)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2004 17:57 UTC (Thu)
by chad.netzer (subscriber, #4257)
[Link]
Posted Apr 29, 2004 4:23 UTC (Thu)
by showell (guest, #2929)
[Link] (3 responses)
As a Debian user I want a solid and relatively up to date system and I rely on the debian community to deliver this. Does the community not feel some moral responsibility to deliver a system that is current and the most all encompassing that they can. It is always touted that under Open Software we can go elsewhere but there is a cost involved and I would rather stay and just "apt-get upgrade." Then again we need to have pressure brought to force Linux support from vendors and Debian is doing that with their Social Contract. My vote therefore is for rationalism here. Having a Sarge Exception seems a wholly reasonble thing to do.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 14:43 UTC (Thu)
by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029)
[Link] (2 responses)
I use Debian and non-free. I also have a few packages installed that weren't available directly from Debian. If they remove non-free I'll just have more packages from elsewhere until free alternatives exist. The point is that the Debian project aims to provide a "solid and relatively up to date" _free_ system. The "all encompassing" part is the end-user's problem. After all, even MS Windows, which is _intended_ to be proprietary and all-encompassing, doesn't come with GSView or CygWin installed ---the user has to download and install it him- or herself. With alternative apt sources available (though I personally prefer to build from tarred sources for non-Debian packages), Debian makes this even easier than Windows, and the likelihood is that if non-free were removed from Debian it would rapidly appear on one of these alternates.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 16:51 UTC (Thu)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link] (1 responses)
Debian makes certain promises to its users in its Social Contract:
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. ...
Allowing sarge to languish forever and letting woody become unusable on current hardware would not serve the needs of Debian's users. So Debian has to solve this problem somehow, and there are people working on it.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 17:39 UTC (Thu)
by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029)
[Link]
Posted Apr 29, 2004 7:45 UTC (Thu)
by fandom (subscriber, #4028)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2004 10:27 UTC (Thu)
by mbanck (subscriber, #9035)
[Link] (2 responses)
Does the '100% free' mean that all GPL programs are now excluded from
Debian? I think it does.
This has been rehashed ad nauseam. The license text itself is an exception of this in order to protect the GPL'd packages. Further, the changes in the social contract were editorial and do not change the spirit of it. It is just the Release Manager's decision that he now does not want to ignore these issues for Sarge any longer, given that a supermajority voted to clarify his interpretation of the social contract. Michael
Posted Apr 29, 2004 16:52 UTC (Thu)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link]
Every license (including the modified BSD license, MPL, QPL, Artistic license, etc) contains certain text that must be preserved verbatim. The GPL is not at all unique in that respect.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 22:05 UTC (Thu)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
[Link]
This is purely a matter of RMS not wanting his license-writing work to be bent to different ends by users (i.e. copyright owners). On the other hand, Debian packages don't, in general, include the GPL document itself; that is in /usr/share/common-licenses, and is distributed "along with" Debian, but not part of Debian; since Debian can't do anything to the document other than distribute it verbatim, it doesn't really make sense to consider it part of Debian. Debian packages include copyright notices which refer to but do not include the GPL.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 7:49 UTC (Thu)
by amacater (subscriber, #790)
[Link]
Probably nothing in the longer term but 300 mails overnight each night lately :) Keep going - IMHO, there _will_ be a stable release of Debian before 2006 :) Andy amacater@galactic.demon.co.uk
Posted Apr 29, 2004 9:26 UTC (Thu)
by Ross (guest, #4065)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2004 10:46 UTC (Thu)
by modernjazz (guest, #4185)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2004 21:12 UTC (Thu)
by Ross (guest, #4065)
[Link]
Posted Apr 29, 2004 12:24 UTC (Thu)
by hppnq (guest, #14462)
[Link]
If I wanted to read about how Linux needs to do this or
that to be a serious operating system I wouldn't be here reading LWN.
Wasting your time, huh?
Posted Apr 29, 2004 19:14 UTC (Thu)
by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
[Link] (3 responses)
My, oh my, how sad for you. Joachim
Posted Apr 29, 2004 21:08 UTC (Thu)
by Ross (guest, #4065)
[Link] (2 responses)
What I didn't appreciate was the tone in this:
I thought those were written by the editor because I wasn't using a CSS compliant web browser. Now that I am, it is obvious they were written by
Ted. In the other browser there was no indentation, italics, quotes, etc.
That's my fault. However I do take issue with the idea that it is impossible to meet both the goal of a free system and a usage system at the same time. This has been an argument against Linux from the beginning and I think it has been sufficiently demonstrated to be untrue. Even if every single font had to be thrown out there are many public domain fonts which could be used instead. And there is always non-free. Many people already depend on the non-free packages.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 22:16 UTC (Thu)
by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
[Link] (1 responses)
But since you took my jotted comments so earnestly and wrote a reasonable explanation, I'll answer you more seriously this time. There is one problem: IMNSHO the issue is not if it is possible to create a free and usable system. Here I agree fully with you, that's possible. The issue at hand is the definition of free according to Debian. Some people disagree about that definition. As an example: According to that definition, TeX (that's DEKs base system, not LaTeX) is not free. Ridiculous, if you want my opinion. And this is a very good example that shows that some Debian folks (influential and vocal ones) are indeed on the quest to show that they are Holier Than RMS. As somebody who was/is involved in XEmacs and LaTeX development and who works since 1982 on free software (search my name in Google), I had my share of quarrels both with RMS and with Debian. And I tell you, RMS is a nice, logical, insightful, and reasonable person -- compared with the abusive folks from debian-legal. Their rude behaviour is mentioned quite often, I'm not alone in this experience. So for me, the editorial tells about the experiences with the Debian project, and actually in a polite way compared to the rudeness that I've experienced from parts of the Debian project. Thus, it reports facts. You may not like them (I don't like them either, having been on the receiving side of that rudeness), but these experiences are real and therefore are facts. Cheers,
Posted Apr 30, 2004 7:17 UTC (Fri)
by Ross (guest, #4065)
[Link]
Maybe there should be different definitions for different types of works However you were wrong when you said that I'm a Debian fan. Yes, I've used
Posted Apr 29, 2004 13:35 UTC (Thu)
by zooko (guest, #2589)
[Link] (2 responses)
In any case, this decision on Debian's part has negligible effect on me for now. It will continue to have negligible effect until such a point as updates appear which remove functionality that I use. If an update appears that removes a font that I use, or whatever, the I'll have to think about what to do. Probably just add some renegade apt-source to my /etc/apt/sources.list file, as I currently do for things like mplayer that aren't in debian proper. I guess the point is that the openness of Debian, and the excellent automated packaging tools makes it very easy for users to avoid the problem of an ancient "stable" release and to avoid the problem of the Debian taking away functionality that the users want. Does that consitute a fork? I dunno -- I've already been using a few non-official apt-sources for years. Maybe the same technique will continue to work if I want stuff like non-DFSG docs, fonts, etc.
Posted Apr 29, 2004 14:47 UTC (Thu)
by rwmj (subscriber, #5474)
[Link]
Rich.
Posted Apr 30, 2004 11:54 UTC (Fri)
by wookey (guest, #5501)
[Link]
I think you'll find the stable server numbers are a lot higher than that. I run 7 Debian machines, 3 servers, 3 desktops and a laptop. Both the servers that are exposed to the net, and one of the desktops, run stable. One server and one desktop are used to compile new debian packages so need to run unstable. The laptop runs testing. The last desktop runs old-stable because it doesn't get used much. I'd expect most productions servers out there to be using stable. I do run a backported spamassassin on them, as that is something that needs to be up-to-date to be useful. I'd guess the above pattern is fairly typical (apart from the old-stable box :-) You might be able to get some better numbers from netcraft, but I couldn't actually find any. I do agree that after about 2 years the pressures to upgrade start to increase in many environments, which is why a new release would be good sometime soonish. I actually think Debian is right to be strict about its vision of Freedom, but I'm also prepared to accept a bit of pragmatism in order to release sarge with GFDL and firmware that doesn't really make the cut.
Posted Apr 30, 2004 9:12 UTC (Fri)
by ortalo (guest, #4654)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 30, 2004 12:58 UTC (Fri)
by jondkent (guest, #19595)
[Link]
However, I do understand where they are coming from yet I think that alot of the recent policy modifications have not been thought though enough. Debian stable is so old that its almost becoming irrelvant (note the stable release _not_ Debian itself). I too think that they must pass another GR to get a new release out of the door this year.
1) Anthony's post was hot-headed and sensationalistic. His statements aren't the end of the story. Call us in a few weeks and then see if you think the entire episode is newsworthy, as opposed to only the opening barrage.Debian: too free?
1) Anthony may have been a bit hot-headed, but I've seen nobody saying that the current social contract allows the release of sarge in its current state.
The Debian Project's stated philosophy and its current distribution contradict each other, and some sort of resolution will have to be found.
Debian: too free?
Debian: too free?
The article is a good summary of the discussion that has been occurring on the debian-devel mailing list. I only quibble with this sentence:
Debian: too free?
Anthony Towns has let it be known that the new social contract
will delay things further.
This omits several condition that AJT added. AJT did say:
As such, I can see no way to release sarge without having all these
things removed from the Debian system -- ie main.
but he went on to say:
So, if the technical committee would like to comment on this issue,
take the decision out of my hands, or overrule any decision I might
otherwise make, now would be a good time. Otherwise, if folks want
to take up a [General Resolution] to do likewise, now is a good
time to start thinking about it.
The way I read it, AJT is not so much announcing a major delay as he is warning that there will be a major delay UNLESS he is given some way of escaping the restrictions of the newly disambiguated Social Contract for the purposes of releasing Sarge. A General Resolution of the kind he suggests here has already been proposed and seconded.
I and many others (about 150 of them, at least) don't think the "previous" Social Contract was being adhered to by AJ's release policy, either.Debian: too free?
"Also, Netscape 4.77, as a piece of non-free software, is not part of Debian woody."
Debian: too free?
If you use non-free software, it is to your advantage to maintain that it is not part of Debian; the more people conflate the two, the closer Debian comes to *really* violating the SC, and the more people support removal of non-free.Debian: too free?
Debian: too free?
I've always seen Debian as something like the Australian Democrats, who's unofficial motto is "keeping the bastards honest".Debian: too free?
Debian is quite widely used, both by programmers and in industry. See the recent netcraft survey, for instance.
Debian is a big distro
The analogy is apt. Keeping the bastards honest... and occasionally getting drunk and out-of-control on national televison.
Debian: too free?
The analogy is "apt"? As a Debian user, I got quite confused for a second.Debian: too free?
Both sides have valid arguments but both miss one point. Debian: too free?
Why would there be an obligation for the Debian project to provide something conforming to the expectations of a particular user or subset of users? Debian provides what it provides, and presumably whether you (or anyone) use it or not depends at least in part on the Debian project's policies.Debian: too free?
Debian: too free?
4. Our priorities are our users and free software
Sure, and I agree that a special Sarge exception is a reasonable thing to do as a stop-gap measure. My only point was that the interests of the users aren't well-enough defined to say that those interests include an all-encompassing system. Keeping the world safe for free software could just as easily be considered in the interests of Debian's users (as opposed to, say, Lindows/Linspire users), and would preclude putting the kitchen sink (with its proprietary plumbing fixtures) into the distribution.Debian: too free?
The GPL text includes a copyright tag saying that it has to copied Debian: too free?
verbatim.
Does the '100% free' mean that all GPL programs are now excluded from
Debian? I think it does.
The GPL text includes a copyright tag saying that it has to copied
verbatim.Debian: too free?
Debian: too free?
That's not actually true. The ability to produce derivatives of the GPL would not allow people to modify the license under which they received the code, just as changing the copyright tag in the document would not make it legal to do so.Debian: too free?
This is another blip. Just as Debian traditionally suffers major hardwareDebian: too free?
hassles immediately prior to a release, so there are traditionally tensions, flamewars and arguments around this time. I can remember back as far as Debian 1.1 - browsing the mail archives for the last few years
is often worthwhile so that you can see other major issues flare up
and die away [Deity/trove flamewars anyone - the eventual package was
named apt :) ]
I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed with the tone of this article,Editorial Tone
especially near the end of the article with the polarized gloom-and-doom
and condescending statements about people's motivations and the goals of
the project. If I wanted to read about how Linux needs to do this or
that to be a serious operating system I wouldn't be here reading LWN.
An important function of journalism is to force a Editorial Tone
community to face awkward and unpleasant facts. A
statement like
"In the longer term, Debian is going to have to come to a
conclusion about where its priorities truly lie"
is simply the bald-faced truth. The many different
reasons for running Debian cannot coexist under one roof
if there are members of that community who insist on
restricting that roof to only a portion of the
house. Perhaps the roof has to be bigger, or the house
smaller, but either way a decision must be made.
Personally, I'd like to see Debian much more tolerant of
"impure" components---after all, the hardware it runs on
is not free. But the proper resolution is a matter for
debate. Rest assured, however, that as a current Debian
advocate I will be watching this debate with great
interest.
Yes, I agree. I don't mind such things being pointed out because we are all better off knowing about them. I was responding to a portion of the article which I thought was part of the editorial but was really a quote for one of the positions. I was afraid I was seeing the LWN editorial used to call a large number Debian developers "fanatics", "Holier Than Stallman", and their beliefs "insanity". I should have known better.
Editorial Tone
There's nothing wrong with the editorial tone from where I'm standing.
In fact, this article is a shining example of why I like LWN so much.
Editorial Tone
You mean, you didn't like that the editorial expressed your own view, but noted an existing problem that you want to pretend that it isn't there?Editorial Tone
Did I say that? (I assume you meant "didn't express")Editorial Tone
Do you enjoy inserting words into people's mouths and then
telling them how sad it is that they said those words?
How sad for you...
If instead, it turns out there are significant numbers of people who believe their participation in Debian is really more about proving that
they are Holier Than Stallman, those that *are* interested in making something useful for their users have their choice of either (a)
trying to see if they have the votes to shut-out the fanatics, (b) try to build something useful that uses Debian as a base, and leaves the
insanity behind, or (c) join the Fedora project, or some other distribution.
No, you didn't say that explicitely. But your comments make your viewpoint quite clear. You're a Debian fan, and you don't like your distribution being dissed. OK, see, I'm not a Debian fan -- and I think my comments made this quite clear without the need to express that explicitely. I wanted to tease you, and I obviously succeeded. Welcome in the real world. This is not "putting words into someones mouth", this is infering somebody's opinion from the words he writes.Editorial Tone
Joachim Schrod
Your point about multiple definitions of "free" is well taken. I canEditorial Tone
completely understand that an overly restrictive definition can be
counterproductive and exclude software and other works with resonable
licenses. I guess the problem is finding a scope and definition which
will provide strong protection for users without being so inflexible.
or for different types of packages.
the distribution in the past, but I've been using Red Hat since 95 or so.
I used Slackware before that. I do find Debian's political nature
fascinating and I know it results in many flame wars and heated debates.
I'm sorry to hear that you have had bad experiences with some of them. I
guess being in the middle of it isn't as fun as watching from the outside.
I've used Debian for many years, and continue to use it now. People who use the debian "stable" release are vanishingly rare, as far as I know. I expect approximately 0% of Debian desktops, and less than 10% of Debian servers, use stable. I just made those numbers up, of course, in order to make a point. Maybe someone else can suggest a way to get better statistics?This doesn't matter to me, an actual Debian user.
It must be quite approximately because I've got a bunch of desktops and servers running Debian stable ... What's wrong with KDE 2.2 anyway? I've seen the newer version and it looks a bit flashier but doesn't seem to be functionally any more advanced.This doesn't matter to me, an actual Debian user.
Zooko said: I expect approximately 0% of Debian desktops, and less than 10% of Debian servers, use stable. I just made those numbers up, of course, in order to make a point.This doesn't matter to me, an actual Debian user.
Of course, as probably anyone not informed already, I've read this news with strong initial disappointement. More Debian delays are really annoying. *Really*!Debian: too free? And hardware technical documentation...
However, when thinking to it longer, I have to admit that hardware manufacturers are also very annoying. For example, I've been waiting much longer for *complete* technical hardware documentation from Matrox (for the G200/G400/G450 series of graphic chipsets and especially their 3D hardware setup engine which documentation chapter has been removed from the available documents) than for a Debian release. Not to speak about 3Dfx several years ago, NVidia, etc. Graphics hardware technical documentation is really a pain to obtain (browse GGI/KGI related issues on the net to see my own research over the years). Of course, a lot of XFree, FBDev or other developpers are doing their best to hide this situation from final users and give them operational device drivers; but this hidden work is extremely painful. This situation in the graphics hardware field is bad, but seems to extend to other areas over the years: remember WinModems, those USB modems, all these USB gadgets? More examples are likely to come in the future.
There are other reasons to complain from such lack of freedom than simply the inability to hack at leisure: no documentation usually means no quality, or short time support; confidential documentation sometimes means buggy or over-expensive hardware; NDA documentation may also mean paying device drivers someday; etc.
Maybe it is time now for a big Linux distribution to start simply *dropping support* for such things? That is to say to use its weight to influence the world in order to get rid of such painful work, horrible interlocutors, and such hardware.
Probably, most computer users do not really care if they buy hardware with full technical documentation available somewhere. I do. And I really think they should too.
The Debian policy movement may be about this, that is to say about a practical and pragmatic problem, not only a theoretical issue. (I am not a Debian developer, so I cannot say. But I think it's worth wondering.)
I must admit that I read about this with a sense of both disappointment and understanding. I do think that at times Debian worry excessively about what is really free to the detriment of their user base, which, as a previously post points out, should be evenly matched in the Debian social contract.Debian: too free?