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FlameFlamePosted Jul 5, 2004 8:13 UTC (Mon) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487)Parent article: Debian postpones social contract changes
It is amusing how Debian managed to receive heat from both sides at once: from calc, for "intending to knowingly ship non-free stuff in main", and from jensend, for "being the domain only of the "GNU/Holier than thou"... Folks! Don't you know that Debian is a diverse crowd of about 900 developers? Read the f***ing vote results! To simplify the Concorde Vote Counting, while the winning (moderate) option was approved by total of 339 supporters, radical "enforce the SC now" option had 155 supporters, and it's opposite "revert the SC changes" was supported by 255: doesn't look like unanimous decision, does it? So please quit bashing Debian for being this or that. The only thing that Debian is, is an open project, with decision power in the hands of its participants. To paint it whole as too radical or not radical enough is over-generalization to say the least.
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Flame Posted Jul 5, 2004 9:29 UTC (Mon) by calc (guest, #22286) [Link] Yes, I am aware of the voting results. If you take into consideration thepast several GR's voting results along with the discussion on the various mailing lists it does seem Debian has been swayed to let anything go, instead of following the intent of its SC. Woody does have non-free stuff in it that is true, but no one actually noticed that was the case at that time or it would have been removed then. Of course if Debian does happen to release Sarge+1 in less than 2-3 years perhaps this black mark on its reputation will be forgotten quickly. What Debian releases represents Debian as a whole, and releasing known non-free items in main reflects poorly on all its maintainers. Perhaps those who feel that Debian is not free enough should fork and create a distribution that actually adheres to its SC? ;) I am a Debian Developer myself, I currently maintain around 240 packages and am also the project manager of the AMD64 port so I am not criticizing Debian from an bystanders perspective.
Flame Posted Jul 5, 2004 10:03 UTC (Mon) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link] What Debian releases represents Debian as a whole, and releasing known non-free items in main reflects poorly on all its maintainers. Perhaps those who feel that Debian is not free enough should fork and create a distribution that actually adheres to its SC? ;) That is precisely my point: as in any democracy (or anarchy, if you're not afraid of this word;), you are free to either follow the majority, or to use direct action to oppose it. The latter would mean either creating a fork, or at least enforcing SC in the packages you maintain and submitting patches to other packages. Even though I voted for options 1 and 6, I am not discontent enough (nor have enough resources) to start a fork. If you start it, I would join it, if it wouln't require me to leave Debian. Judging by the vote results, that would be position of quite a lot of DDs.
Constructive flame. Posted Jul 5, 2004 14:39 UTC (Mon) by mjr (subscriber, #6979) [Link] The latter would mean either creating a fork, or at least enforcing SC in the packages you maintain and submitting patches to other packages. Indeed; as a non-DD I'd urge any malcontents to be constructive and act according to the latter option. I doubt that DFSG compliance patches would be frowned upon. I'm only maintaining a single package of my own software, but I know I'd fix it regardless of this vote if it had something non-DSFG-free in it.
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