Re: Q to all candidates: dropping SC §5

>>>>> "Stefano" == Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> writes:

    Stefano> do you think the time is ripe for dropping section §5 of the Debian
    Stefano> Social Contract [1], namely "Works that do not meet our free software
    Stefano> standards" or should we wait more?

[...]

    Stefano> - Dropping SC §5 would not necessarily mean removing contrib non-free
    Stefano> from our mirror network, from our dak instance, etc. It might simply
    Stefano> mean stopping publicly sanctioning that Debian aims at supporting
    Stefano> mixed free/non-free setup. Developers interested in working on
    Stefano> contrib/non-free will not be stopped by doing so even if SC §5 would
    Stefano> get dropped.

    Stefano> No matter the timing, do you see dropping SC §5 as a worthwhile goal at
    Stefano> all?

That's a tough thing, to be honest. On one hand, supporting non-free
sends a message I'm not particularly happy with. On the other hand, it
allows a lot of people to work with free software, on hardware that
doesn't work without non-free - and this is beneficial. If we keep
non-free on our mirrors, and allow such packages to use the BTS, what
exactly does removing SC §5 buy us? I'd think that would do more harm
than good, because while we would say we're not supporting such
software, we'd still provide infrastructure for them. That's a worse
message than accepting some people's need for non-free.

So, the only way I could see the drop of SC §5 as a worthwhile goal, is
if we also removed non-free (and possibly contrib) too. Unfortunately, I
do not think we're quite there yet. But - in the long run - it would be
a worthy goal to pursue.

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