Debian: too free? [LWN.net]

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 1:47 UTC (Thu) by dbharris (subscriber, #19820)
Parent article: Debian: too free?

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.

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.)

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Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:17 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

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.

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?

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:32 UTC (Thu) by dbharris (subscriber, #19820) [Link]

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.

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 9:16 UTC (Thu) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link]

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:

   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.

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:48 UTC (Thu) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

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.

Also, Netscape 4.77, as a piece of non-free software, is not part of Debian woody.

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:53 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

"Also, Netscape 4.77, as a piece of non-free software, is not part of Debian woody."

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....

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 3:03 UTC (Thu) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

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.

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.

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 5:32 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #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... ;-)