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Debian Can Now Amend Social Contract, DFSG
Posted by
michael
on Thu Oct 30, 2003 04:57 PM
from the constitutional-convention dept.
from the constitutional-convention dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Debian Project, creators of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, has voted to allow amendments to their Social Contract and Free Software Guidelines, as long as the developers agree with a 3:1 majority. The full text of the various amendments can be found in the original call for votes. Debian developer and XFree86 packager Branden Robinson has already proposed an amendment to the Social Contract that removes the requirement to maintain an archive for non-free software or "contrib" software (free software that depends on non-free software to work). Debian could still maintain this archive, but would no longer be required to do so. The proposal also updates the Social Contract to clearly require all works in Debian to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines, not just software, which had come up repeatedly in the discussions over the non-free "GNU Free Documentation Licence". Both of these updates have been under consideration for some time, but were waiting on the ratification of the amendment procedure. The Debian Project voted on this amendment using their modified Condorcet voting procedure, which allows voters to rank the choices in order of preference, eliminating the "lesser of two evils" effect common to simple majority voting."
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Debian Can Now Amend Social Contract, DFSG
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This is good news (Score:2, Insightful)
What's really interesting here is that this moves them a little closer to the way the Gentoo people operate. Take a look at Their Social Contract [gentoo.org] for comparison purposes.
Um.... what? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.debian.org/)
No. No, not at all. In fact it moves them farther away from Gentoo. In Gentoo's Social Contract, there is nothing explicitly stated about Documentation, but rather refers explicitly to software as binaries or sources. Debian has been working on productive discussions with the FSF over the GFDL for over two years, and this change is a direct result from those discussions. Most Debian Developers feel that documentation qualifies as software, and should be included under the DFSG as well.
Everything in Gentoo's Social contract is basically directly lifted from Debian's, although they decided not to take it all. The Gentoo people don't operate on nearly the same strict standards of Freedom that Debian does, and the differences in the Social Contracts, including the latest change, demonstrates that. If the Gentoo people decide to move in this direction too, it'll be because of more than two years of hard wrangling on debian-legal.
Re:Um.... what? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://perens.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07 2006, @08:49PM)
Bruce
Re:Who is the Debian "User"? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://perens.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07 2006, @08:49PM)
IMO this mission lies with the Debian derivative rather than with Debian. Like Libranet and Knoppix, for example.
Bruce
Heh... (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if this scratches a subconscious need that was previously fulfilled by the complex gameplay of DnD and RPGs that many geeks did as kids?
I don't want politics, i want software!
(all in jest, of course)
Re:Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lot of noise going on as of late regarding GPL vs. SCO, GPL vs. BSD-license, copylefts, copyrights, patents, etc...
I'll admit that i'm ignorant to a lot of this, maybe blissfully so. Though i can read a lot of posts and reactions of people in debates (i see mainly BSD vs. GPL license wars here and on Usenet, usually from both sides since i use both FreeBSD and Debian) and see that a lot of other people might be as half-cocked clueless as me, i feel like i *should* know and understand it all.
It nags at me, i feel obligated to pursue it, but damn.... I just can't keep myself interested in licensing and stuff long enough to get anywhere.
Am i wrong? Or is it best to be left to those with the abilities for this thing?
Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://perens.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07 2006, @08:49PM)
I have some simple rules for licensing that you can use if you don't want to get in too deep. First, make sure that the copyright holders (that's you and anyone else who contribute) own what they are contributing. They can't have cut and pasted from elsewhere, they have to have written the code.
Then, use the GPL for stuff you do on your free time, and use the BSD license for stuff that someone else pays you for if they don't like the GPL.
The GPL is sharing with rules, the BSD license is a gift with almost no requirements upon the folks who get the code. It makes sense that if you do the work on your own time, people who modify the work should give you the same rights on their changes that you gave them on the original code - and the GPL requires that. But if you get paid to do the code, BSD is fine - because it's not a gift as far as you are concerned.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://snogglethorpe.googlepages.com/home)
good idea (Score:1, Funny)
Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://perens.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07 2006, @08:49PM)
When I created the original Debian Social Contract, non-free wouldn't have been self-supporting. But we've had this hypocracy about non-free since then. Non-free is not officially part of Debian, but is maintained as part of Debian, using all of the same facilities and within the same organization. Debian can now afford to be 100% Free Software and no exceptions, and can put non-free somewhere else with people who care about it. APT will handle this very easily, there's no overhead to the user except perhaps to change /etc/apt/sources.list once, which we can do for them with a script.
Bruce
Re:Non-Free Needs Its Own Organization (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://perens.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07 2006, @08:49PM)
Some time before non-free disappears from Debian's mirrors, we'd make some base package require a package containing an installation script that looks to see if the user is presently using the non-free repository. So, everyone who runs an upgrade would get this package, and it's script would run. If the user is using the non-free repository, the user gets a note that it's moving, and is asked if he'd like to reset his apt choices to the new location of non-free or to do without non-free from then on, in which case we'd present the list of packages that would be lost from the system.
Debian isn't about taking choice s away from people. But that doesn't mean that Debian can't make it's own choices and ask people to find what they want elsewhere.
Bruce
politics (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.eyemud.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 02, @11:28AM)
If I wanted politics, i'd
I suppose I won't ever be using Debian, given my constraints (I tried it once - packages were way too old for my taste) but I wish someone would take the above to heart.
Re:politics (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.debian.org/)
And then once the software is in the hands of the distro makers, they have to package it properly. Now, believe it or not, but packaging something well is tough. It's like programming, so you have to shake the bugs out of that too over time.
I guess it comes down to a different definition of stable. If you think all software is stable right out of the gate because it runs, then you've got a different definition of stable than most Debian developers. If you want that stuff, there's a version of Debian you can track: it's called unstable (and you can even sprinkle in experimental, if you really have the faith).
I really don't understand the general Linux user's need to get the latest and greatest at all times. Most of us ran windows for years, and simply waited for Microsoft to say "Ok, it's ready, here you go" every two or more years before upgrading. Debian's release schedule isn't a whole lot different, but you can simply see what's going on behind the scenes, so people tend to get impatient. How quickly we forget.
Re:politics (Score:5, Informative)
(http://jaeger.festing.org/)
Odds are you'll get flamed by a handful of Debian fanboys and applauded by a handful of Debian haters. I fit squarely in the "Debian fanboy" category, but I'm going to try to stay away from flaming.
Debian's distribution system has three tiers: stable, testing, and unstable. The stable release is the one you complained about having "way too old" packages, which is fully legitimate -- Debian's stable packages are old. The theory is to maintain a consistent, fully-supported system that is Really Stable, while maintaining the ability to provide security updates when necessary. This is especially useful on production servers, where it's a Bad Idea to change *anything* without contemplating it first. It works well for systems that shouldn't need coddling to maintain; if I were building a Debian system for my mother I'd use stable.
Obviously, stable won't work for everyone. For those who like the bleeding edge, there's unstable, which contains the Latest and Greatest Software (much of it prerelease; all of it updated frequently). Unstable might break everything, but when it works, you get Mozilla 1.5 without having to think about it and everything New and Improved!
And then there's testing, which contains all of the New and Improved! packages from unstable after they've had a few weeks to sit and haven't had any bug reports filed against them. Testing is good for those who don't feel compelled to live on the edge but don't want to live in 2001, either.
Debian isn't for everyone, but that's why Linux is free software -- "free" as in "freedom".
Again? (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://home.zonnet.nl/hardwareogg/)
Branden Robinson just keeps going on and on about removing the non-free archive. If he doesn't like it, why the fuck doesn't he just not use it?
Some of us are quite happy to live with the "non-freeness" of applications like qmail...
Re:Again? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.debian.org/)
He's not stopping you from using qmail, nor is he stopping people from putting up their own apt sources (people do it every day!) that host non-free, he just wants it out of the project so it can be free of this bizarre dichotomy.
This is good news, Thanks Bruce (Score:2)
(http://www.reanimality.com/)
Is it possible that when Debian restructures the official hierarchy that it shows a PNG Graphic(assuming one isn't using Lynx) of the hierarchy so that when people get to the graphic they get an immediate visual layout of how Debian is organized? From there you can have Key that references apt sources to add to one's own list for specific non-free software providers of debs.
The image could be updated periodically reflecting the structure and source listings.
It would make for using Google less and keep a nice central reference point.
Just a thought.
good news for voting too (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.burtleburtle.net/bob | Last Journal: Friday October 03 2003, @12:58PM)
Now that we have a well-defined best known way to vote, perhaps we can get governments to adopt it for city, state, even national elections. I very much want the US to become more democratic.
This is good for Debian! (Score:5, Informative)
Out of all the distros out there I personally like debian the best, and this is another reason why. With all the alternatives available to the open source community you have to hand it to Debian for allowing users easy freedom of choice. If you want only free software then don't add contrib or non-free to your sources.list. If you want stability and security on your computer, use woody. If you want new software and don't care if it meets free software definitions, use sid with contrib and non-free.
I have several computers all running debian and each have different setups depending upon what I'm using it for. Debian makes this very easy to do and IMHO, along with apt, is what makes debian better than the other distros. Ultimately this leads to a better separation of choice and still allows anyone to easily configure debian whatever way they want.
-Pat
Debian needs to get over it. (Score:2, Insightful)
However...
having packages for non-free stuff is good, and NECESSARY, as well. Yes, anyone can make them.. but it really helps having a central repository. IN the real business world, you can only take the need for freedom so far. I love Debian servers, but at some point there is non-free stuff I *need* to run.
Further... I'm sure everyone has said it before, but Debian really NEEDS to get it's stable releases more often, or at least more current. Stable is WAY behind the curve.. to the point where the benefit of running a common server on stable is almost gone now... I have to build everything manually.
Perhaps paring down the set of core software required to be well put together to call it stable?
"Just use testing, it's stable" is fine and dandy.. except security fixes don't come out in time.... again defeating the purpose.
So.. debian continue sto be awesome, for sure.. but I really, really wish they would focus a bit more and get more stable releases out more often.
I am very, very close to not being able to use debian any more internally because it creates too much work, compared to something sleazy like redhat.
Mplayer (Score:1)
not likely to see many changes then, are we? (Score:2)
(http://anothy.9srv.net/)
well, if they have to have three times as many developers as they have, we're not likely to see very many changes made, are we?
unless some people are more equal than others...
(yes, i'm kidding)
hmmm nice but (Score:1)
Anybody wondering... (Score:4, Informative)
"Condorcet's method is one of several pairwise methods, which are great methods for electing people in single-seat elections (president, governor, mayor, etc.). Condorcet's method is named after the 18th century election theorist who invented it. Unlike most methods which make you choose the lesser of two evils, Condorcet's method and other pairwise methods let you rank the candidates in the order in which you would see them elected. The way the votes are tallied is by computing the results of separate pairwise elections between all of the candidates, and the winner is the one that wins a majority in all of the pairwise elections.
The best result of this is that if there is Candidate A on one extreme who pulls 40% of the vote, Candidate B in the middle who only pulls 20% of the vote, and Candidate C on the other extreme who pulls 40% of the vote, Candidate B will get elected as a compromise. Why? Because in a two-way contest between A and B, B would win with 60% of the vote, and in a two-way contest between B and C, B would also win with 60% of the vote. (Note that if B is a looney billionaire, he might not be able to win separate pairwise elections against anyone, and this would be reflected with Condorcet's method.)
Condorcet's method lets voters mark their sincere wishes for who they would like to win the election, without having to consider strategy ("I'd vote for Candidate B, but I'm afraid of wasting my vote."). It's really just a logical extension of majority rule when more than two choices are involved."
= 9J =
i'm laughing (Score:1, Troll)
(http://www.trollope.org/)
somebody ought to take those people behind the woodshed and beat them with a clue stick. all they really have done, at th end of the day, is make their distribution less usable (but anyone who actually installed and used debian knows "usability" is a cuss word at that outfit).
if they follow through to these absurd lengths, they've just relegated their distribution to the dustbin. even technically sophisticated people, who know what they are doing, are not going to use a system that requires them to go out to separate resources and download and install documentation for software already installed. it will be irritating and it will be seen as an unnecessary irritation.
if you want to be pure (as in "puritan"), install debian. if you want to get work done, install slackware. if you want a pretty desktop, install redhat. life is full of choices. i chose door number two.
mp
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:3, Funny)
(http://ck-gunslinger.deviantart.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 08 2004, @01:17PM)
[SNL] "Tommy, dude, tell me you got that on tape!" [/SNL] =P
Check your apt setup (Score:3, Informative)
(http://blog.sceal.ie/)
Gnome 2.4, OpenOffice 1.0, Sodipodi 0.32+'
Check your apt-get setup, and update.
If you want a newer stable Debian, help. Debian is a volunteer organisation, after all; you don't
even need to be a DD. Just look at
http://www.debian.org/devel, look at the list of RC bugs, and post fixes to the BTS!
Regards,
Alastair McKinstry
Too late, it's already done! (Score:4, Informative)
(http://perens.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 07 2006, @08:49PM)
Bruce
You mean one of the strong points??? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, this is one of the things that has allways appealed to me about Debian. I use Debian for precisely that reason.
I long ago satisfied myself that Debian did at the very least a sufficient job of vetting the programs in their distro. I think of it as delegating that imprtant job. So, to a great degree, I know I can build a Debian/stable and set up a cron job to apt-get update and apt-get upgrade and be reasonably sure I'm up to date.
If Debian were to change this aspect of their opertion I would need to reconsider using that distro for the jobs I do. Principally, I use Debian for machines inside the firewall which just need to work. I don't need bleeding edge software, nor do I need to mop up the resulting pools of blood.
I know a lot of folks who make the similar complaint about Debian, and my response has allways been the same. You have literally dozens of distro's to select from. If Debian isn't giving you what you want, find another distro. Of course this is selfish, Debian does exactly what I want it to do, and I really would hate for that to change.
Re:Does this mean? (Score:1)
While I'm completely unfamiliar with SodiPodi, it appears that version 0.32 of this is in unstable.
Maybe you actually have a factual statement to make?
Re:Does this mean? (Score:2)
Re:Does this mean? (Score:1)
I feel like I'm being trolled.. but ok. OpenOffice 1.1 has been in unstable for ages, where have you been? Sodipodi 0.32.uus.20031012 is in unstable.
As for GNOME, they were holding back on 2.4 to make sure that GNOME 2.2 made it all the way into testing, because the next release (sarge) is theoretically being attempted this year. Debian is like everything else; furious development slows down as releases draw near, because people want to make sure particular features/fixes make it into the next release without being broken.
Anyway, they succeeded, GNOME 2.2 entered testing and now 2.4 is in unstable.
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://tom.acrewoods.net/)
What you mean to say is that you have grown tired of these ideals.
Personally, I still feel as strongly about the FS ideals as when I first read GNU's philosophy documents [gnu.org]. If they didn't stick to these ideals, the whole fabric of the FS community would disintegrate.
I wonder how you can grow tired of them though, especially if you have woody installed. Do you not see that woody is a direct result of these ideals, that facilitate the development of a system that provides such freedoms, not only in the liberal sense, but also in terms of providing new opportunities to those who, in the 'real' world suffer inequal opportunities. If it weren't for the availability of a completely free system based upon open standards that is guaranteed to remain Free, the only way to ensure that digital media remain accessible would be to constantly legislate to make people use open formats, and of course every day we see why FS people are so right when companies implement more proprietary schemes that deny access.
A firm committment to FS ideals, and a management structure carefully scrutinised by a collection of computer scientists, philosophers, psychologists and whoever else looks after Debian is absolutely the best thing a distribution community could hope for.
Re: Screw Debian (Score:1)
(http://web.mit.edu/millerp/www)
apt-get was originally made for the debian packaging system.
Since then an apt-get for rpm's has also been but the debian apt-get is still doing just fine.
I also like gentoo but I'd like to point out that I'd have to bootstrap a kernel to get gentoo running on my system where as Knoppix (which is debian based) runs just fine.
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:2)
More maintainers is *NOT* the answer (Score:2)
(http://moregruel.net/)
Debian has plenty of maintainers. But packaging something like Gnome or OpenOffice, making it work on all the platforms that Debian supports, and dealing with clean upgrades is a non-trivial task.
And MONTHS is a bit of an exageration:
Gnome 2.4 was released September 11th.
OpenOffice.Org 1.1 was released October 1.
SodiPodi 0.31, okay, I'll give you that one.
You want faster releases? Come help, there's nothing stopping you from it.
And did you even *read* the ammendment? It's got nothing to do with getting new developers.
I run Debian/Unstable (Score:2)
(http://mathaddicts.org/ | Last Journal: Friday December 27 2002, @04:50AM)
(Debian/Sid for PowerPC.)
Re:Does this mean? (Score:1)
(http://ctrl-alt-date.com/)
You don't need to be a maintainer to help Debian, using it and reporting bugs is one kind of help.
Fixing bugs is another; and fixing bugs for Debian will help all distributions with that software in it.
Funny how some people want others to do all the work for them .. Debian is definately a distribution for people that are prepared to help themselves, and each other.
Re:Just one more reason to stay away from Debian.. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://nchipin.kos.to/)
As we have seen from the SCO case, being anal about licensing and redistribution terms is unfortunately necessary. Better be safe than sorry.
Re:Does this mean? (Score:1)
Open office 1.1 [debian.org]
SodiPodi 0.32 [debian.org]
gnome 2.4 [debian.org]
Re:Exactly what I'm talking about... APPLE RULES (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.debian.org/)
a mater of resources, Mr. Fart. (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://lists.clickers.org/linuxsig/index.html | Last Journal: Sunday December 02, @12:42PM)
I'm tired of all this "we hate software if it's not free"
You have it backwards. It's not that anyone hates software, it's that there's so much free software there's no reason to use things with restrictions. Why waste your time fooling around with something that's got strings attached when there are 5 or 6 free packages that do exaclty the same thing? How exactly do you hate software anyway?
What I'm tired of is all they hype of commercial software. I hate hearing loud mouths promise me an email client will make me feel like superman. Someone trying to sell me shit that does not work well and that I don't need, that's something to hate.
Now, Mr. Fart, feel free to pay for the above mentioned sleaze bags all you want. Take it and your stale nonsense back to Mr. Gates where it comes from and belongs.
Re:Just in case you actually were serious (Doubtfu (Score:2)
(http://joeykelly.net/ | Last Journal: Wednesday August 16 2006, @09:58PM)
Thanks.
Re:Exactly what I'm talking about... APPLE RULES (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 18 2004, @03:28AM)
Quicktime does come with the Mac OS (both classic and OS X based) install CD's. But guess what - you do not have to run them. You can turn off the plugins within whatever browser you're using.
Where the default DVD player won't allow me to play videos fullscreen without kludges.
Umm - granted, I've only used the DVD player for OS X 10.2 and 10.3, so I cannot comment on previous versions, but - mine seems to do full screen DVD's by default. I honestly don't know where you came up with this information.
Where there's only one half-baked limited shareware program that provides multiple workspaces.
I cannot comment on this, as I never felt an overwhelming need to use multiple desktops. Also, with 10.3, Expose has pretty much removed any lingering desires for multiple desktops (yeah yeah, $129). But, if multiple desktops are fully needed, use that kludge, or read on.
Where I have no choice of turning off the glittery bells & whistles interface.
Actually, you can do just that - you can have Mac OSX 10.1 - 10.2 (and likely 10.3 also, but I haven't seen this confirmed) boot up with just a frame buffered console, or you can load XFree86 (not the one supplied with Apple, since that one only runs rootless - you will have to roll your own), turn off Apple's interface, roll your own Gnome, KDE, fvwm, whatever desktop, and have that presented as your interface. I know that very few people would do this, but I just take issues with your saying "no choice". Oh - and both Gnome and KDE are, as I'm sure you are fully aware, able to do multiple desktops.
Where I won't have to buy a $129 OS upgrade every year.
Nobody is forcing anyone to pay $129 on the OS upgrade. 10.2 did not become obsolete overnight - it still works the same as it did a year ago, with the exception of patches and updates since then. If one is happy with 10.2, they can certainly stick with it.
Re:They voted in a change that lets them change? (Score:2)
(http://www.snowplow.org/martin/)