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Debian Can Now Amend Social Contract, DFSG
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."
So can someone please explain what this means?
This move will really help to advance the speed with which debian can move forward, insofar as its "licensing"( if you can call it that ) goals are concerned.
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 for comparison purposes.
All this licensing stuff is turning into government with constitutions, amendments, and elections.
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)
do() || do_not();
The Debian Project, creators of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, has votedto 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."
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
now maybe they can get together and vote on taking a shower sometime before the next stable release...
i never realized that everyone sees the same quote. interesting...
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
Bruce Perens.
It seems to be on a timer, not random. All the pages have that quote on right now.
Ok, I'll be fair.. I have woody on my laptop.
[SNL] "Tommy, dude, tell me you got that on tape!" [/SNL] =P
It would make sense to do that. If you coded it correctly you could significantly cut down on the processing time that the large number of requests would cause vs. having a completely random quote for each request.
Debian Unstable is not that out of date: Its got
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
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
You would wish that some distro would have its social contract be "To produce a great distribution with the latest software that is stable". Succinct, and what it should be all about.
...well, get involved in same.
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.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Bow down and worship by ironical obtuseness!
pleeeeeeeease?!!!!
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...
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Umm... that's funny, I picked up Gnome 2.4 on an update to unstable weeks ago, to say nothing of OpenOffice 1.1.
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?
Not anymore. Sid has 0.32 and 1.1 right now.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Even Unstable is out of date. For example, Gnome 2.2, SodiPodi 0.31, OpenOffice 1.0
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.
Deb and Ian may talk the talk ..
..
But once their incestuous relationship with Xandros and Lindows comes to fruitation they may never walk the walk
Why should an idea "get old"? Surely the ideals behind Free Software, insofar as their ground assumptions remain true, are timeless? You either agree with them, or you don't.
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. 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.
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.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Wow way to publically display your ignorance.
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.
ThunderBird. Nuff said.
The GNU/ part actually makes sense in Debian though because there are things like the Debian GNU/FreeBSD project which is working to get the Debian and GNU userland working with the FreeBSD kernel, so it's a major difference here.
Ok, it's not true, but would it terribly surprise anyone at this point? :)
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.
Offtopic? C'mon, someone give him a a Funny!
I have one question.
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.
apt-get install portage ; emerge sync ; emerge -u world ; emerge unmerge debian
I have OpenOffice 1.1, SodiPodi 0.32, and Gnome 2.4. Might want to upgrade once every few MONTHS.
(Debian/Sid for PowerPC.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
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.
Free software is cool. All software being free software is not. Socialism blows. End post.
Honestly, though, I'm tired of all this "we hate software if it's not free", and "GNU/"-everything cr4p. To each his own, I guess, but it gets kinda old after a while.
As we have seen from the SCO case, being anal about licensing and redistribution terms is unfortunately necessary. Better be safe than sorry.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Just a little bit of inaccuracy here...
Open office 1.1
SodiPodi 0.32
gnome 2.4
we call them "porch monkeys"
You perception of "Socialism" blows.
apt-get install portage ; emerge sync ; emerge -u world ; emerge unmerge debian
OMG... can you really do this?
Way to go! These people have been the biggest group on the web for some time seriously debating the mechanics of how to vote. I know they've got the fundamentals right. Their choices and extentions have been well thought out too.
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.
Somehow the installer managed not to put "contrib" in my sources.list. Think I'll slink away and read a few more man pages for a while...
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
How do you feel about HP, the company you used to work for, while laying off thousands, buys two new GulfStream 5 jets?
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
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
www.apt-get.org
Or were you complaining about the politics of your distribution's developers? Do you code yourself? Have you released anything for free yourself? Might be worth a try to gain an insight on why people might want to encourage other software to be released under similar conditions.
That shit was funny as hell.
Fuck man, when I work from home I should just find some indian dude that just graduated from ShittyIT and give him half my salary to do my work.
Then I just sit back and play video games. Sure I only make half the pay but i don't have to do anything.
Haha, you fucking PHBs! I BEAT YOU TO IT! I outsourced MY OWN JOB! TAKE THAT YOU BIOTCHES.
The hardware was already broken. It was given a perfectly innocuous command to flush its buffer and instead it began writing its flash PROM. That behaviour is non-standard by anyone's definition.
If a car has a fault that makes it go faster when you press the brake pedal, you can hardly blame somebody who does not know about the fault for running someone over while trying to attempt an emergency stop.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If you want the US to be less plutocratic, I think you need some changes in the media. People vote according to what they are presented with in the news, and the news here is produced for ratings, rather than as a means of cultivating an educated voter. The Internet was supposed to fix that simply by providing more variety in news programming, but it has not, so far, done so.
My current idea would be to require of broadcasters, in exchange for their access to spectrum, that they have much higher standards regarding integrity of news programming, that they not apply ratings to news at all, that they present it when people would see it, and that they broadcast as much news as they do advertising in any 24-hour period. To say that the broadcasters would not like this is an understatement. But they are using a precious spectrum resource for which they presently pay nothing. This would address the "if it bleeds it leads" problem that keep so many of the U.S. people in a state of permanent terror, among other things. And as long as you don't regulate content, you don't get into first ammendment problems.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks for putting a lot of work into a distribution I have found to be bloody useful, and designed quite closely to being everything I'd want from a linux distrib.
Any debian haters passing by, note I didn't proclaim debian's superiority to all other distros.
The flaw was in the drive, not linux. The drive improperly interpreted a command to flush cache as the beginning of a firmware update.
I messed up quite hard on this one. My bad, sorry about that.
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
This question is not tightly related to the current topic, but I thought I could grab this opportunity to ask for a clarification. Item 4 in the Social Contract says:
Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environment. We won't object to commercial software that is intended to run on Debian systems, and we'll allow others to create value-added distributions containing both Debian and commercial software, without any fee from us. To support these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality, 100% free software, with no legal restrictions that would prevent these kinds of use.
What I wonder is, as the Debian user is not more precisly defined, Debian lacks a target group and a common vision for how the Debian OS should work and interact with the user. Different developers may have very different goals and this likely results in a inconsistent or hard to use system. Or, more likely, Debian developers equals themselves with Debian users, and then the system will have a hard time to reach outside of the hacker crowd. Without a common vision for who Debian aims for, how can decisions be made in how the system should work? Do you not see this as a shortcoming of the social contract? Or is it implict that Debian is only for people that are very knowledgable with computers?
That's weird, I was under the impression that Gnome 2.4 as well as SodiPodi 0.32.uus.20031012-2 was in unstable.
How strange.
dey blarin' gangsta rap in dey rides outside yo' crib, homie?
Right. I'll repeat it again for the slow ones around here.. cough .. krmt ... cough... While Linux users debate idiotic things like licenses to use for bits of irrelevent OS fluff, Apple users are getting work done. Clear enough for you? Or should I reword it using the GPL license so that you can understand?
Look. Debian is good, Debian is great, it IS my favorite linux distribution. Sticking to free software is GOOD.
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.
I'm not opposed to the freedom to run only free-as-in-speech software --- I never said that. I am opposed to anyone looking down on me because I run non-Debian distro (SuSE has been my main distro for 4 years now, though I also like NetBSD). I'm not saying every Debian user has an attitude, but I've run into far too many elitists over the years, and quite honestly I don't need elitism, not from Debian users, not from RMS, and not from the BSD crowd.
I'm not alone in my opinion, and everyone here on slashdot has heard both sides of this issue many times. Why am I labelled a troll for speaking up?
I'm willing to admit I'm oversensitive about this issue. I didn't mean to offend anyone by my remarks. I won't back down from my statements regarding elitism, however.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
I was thinking about the multiplication of debian mirrors lately and the security implication of having a mirror rooted by some evil doers...
:)
How is it actually managed?
I had this crazy idea that goes something like this:
When you first install debian, you do it from a safe source (let's say a CD like OpenBSD or a mirror you _really_ trust). All the packages come with the public key of the maintainer and all package are signed by the package maintainer.
Therefore, if someone roots a mirror and change a package you'll get a message like SSH would give:
the key for package "bla" doesnt match, do you want to accept the new key?
Therefore you could spot crackers and if the key change was legitimate, you could go to a list of mirrors where you could verify that the maintainer really did change.. (like debian.org/package/pub.key whatever, and verify the key signature)...
So, does anyone have any idea about how it works and how it should work?
Thanks.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
I thought this was a very funny post. Don't let the mods grind you down.
I don't think you're trolling, I just disagree with you :-)
I think you're conflating different kinds of people in your second post. There are those who will persistently pester you for saying "Linux" not "GNU/Linux", who will look down on you for not using a 100% Free distribution, and any manner of other things.
On the other hand, there are those of us who will maintain that Free Software is necessarily the best choice, and that those who disagree are wrong. This is not elitism, any more than it is elitist to believe that your country, party, politician or particular political belief is 'better' than anyone else's. It is simply a statement of belief; not a personal attack, but if people today cannot accept somebody telling them that they think they're wrong, they need to opt out of intelligent society.
So when I say "I wonder how you can grow tired of [Free Software ideals]", I don't mean to demean you, but to state that I believe that it is contradictory to endorse prprietary software whilst using Free Software. In the end, the principles of Free Software are vastly more important than minute separations in degrees of usability, especially if those separations are of no great nuisance to you. When people don't see this, I think it is because they do not reflect enough on the many case studies that come up on Slashdot where public and private organisations and individiuals find important new freedoms that proprietary software cannot offer. If I didn't think this, then I really couldn't believe in and agree with the Free Software movement, could I?
Where did I do that? Ok, fine, if you dig around on my scratchpad (it's on my site), you'll find I gave a positive reference to Pegasus Mail, which is apparently closed-source, but it's free, and it's the best mail client I've ever used, bar none.
However, in my first post I has pine in mind, which is not free-as-in-beer, but is included in every distro that I've ever loaded, except Debian, and also NetBSD. Pine is free-as-in-speech AFAIK, it's what I've always used for shell mail, and when I put up a box I always install it.
The way I parsed the story headlines made me wonder if, since it's possible that pine would no longer be required in future releases of Debian (yes, I know you have to specify your acceptance of non-free licenses when you try to install pine and like-burdened apps, so technically pine isn't bundled with Debian), and therefore also conceivable that I would have to jump through hoops to get it to install or compile. I know this is reaching, but it's possible that something like that could happen, down the road. What if things forked to the extent that pine couldn't even compile on a Debian box? Or some other app that's non-free?
It may not be much of a big deal for you or other die-hard Debian users, but if I'm going to put up a boxr, I'm going to have to read root mail, and I really don't want to migrate to mutt. If it came down to this scenario, I would find some other distro to run.
Ok, I guess I should have explained more of my reasoning in my first post. Sorry.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Well, but please don't try to unify it with the *nix evolution tree. Then you'll need three screens to make sense of it. At least.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Ah, so you're not talking about proprietary software, OK. With Pine, AFAIK, the reason that Debian cannot include it is because its license stipulates that modified binaries cannot be distributed. That seems like a fairly unambiguous contravention of a user's freedoms, and one that Debian obviously can't accept.
Since, as you say, plenty of alternatives exist, Debian must either make exceptions to allow for users' habits, or it must simply say: learn something else, install Pine yourself, or find another distribution and be clear about your thoughts on Free Software.
It may seem petty, but the alternative would open a pandora's box of problems for the community and the project.
I believe there are some rips available here.
The packages remaining in the non-free archive are mostly from people who said "no".
The "contrib" section consists of free programs that depend on non-free programs. What non-free package does OOo's major functionality depend on?
Will I retire or break 10K?
What we need is a ban on private financing of election campaigns.
The democratic process is severely subverted when campaigns become about accessable image and not about politics.
No, everyone who wants to run for office should get a statutory allowance, funded through tax dollars. A limited a mount of local TV time, radio play, etc. -- for each and every candidate -- should be required, by statute, of broadcasters as a condition of operating on the public airwaves. (Cable operators and the like might be able to opt out by agreeing not to run any campaign ads whatsoever).
Now, watch democracy flurish in a way that's been impossible for nearly a hundred years.
We need equal access to the medium in order for elections to be about anything other than (re-)electing the established, moneyed candidate.
Condorcet, Hare-Clark, Meek's Method, etc. as voting methods are concerns to be addressed thereafter.
Does this increase the chance that Mplayer will be included in a future Debian release?
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
openoffice.org NOT openoffice.
There was a hold up to make OOo 1.1 compile as free software. Some work was put into OOo to remove the reliance on Java to build the application. This has been done so that OOo can now be moved to "free".
Congratulations to the Debian team. I know how hard they work.
// as long as the developers agree with a 3:1 majority.
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)
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I did a little research with Google, and it appears that what makes the Sun PDL non-free is primarily the choice of law provision. Has anybody considered negotiating this with Sun? Or am I missing some point of the PDL, given that a version of Python with choice of law in its license had been in main?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I want a computing platform where:
- Where I won't have QuickTime popping up urging me to "go PRO for $29.99" when I've just spent my kidney, my arm and my leg on a new cool PowerMac G5.
- Where the default DVD player won't allow me to play videos fullscreen without kludges.
- Where there's only one half-baked limited shareware program that provides multiple workspaces.
- Where I have no choice of turning off the glittery bells & whistles interface.
- Where I won't have to buy a $129 OS upgrade every year.
So in other words you want Mac OS X, only you want it for free. Well then sir may I suggest moving to la la land where good quality software is written by professional programmers and given away for free. Here in reality-land, professional quality software costs money and you have to pay for it. Or you could use Linux, an amateur operating system written by hobbyist programmers for hobbyist computer users.
How silly is that? How can anyone think that this sort of absurdly over complicated bureaucratic nonsense will help anything "get to market" _faster_?
If any sane business had an arduous process like this to decide to change something in order to allow an arduous process to allow them to change something, they'd be out of business.
The changes they made will allow them to be as bureaucratic as they want, without having to give up their commitment to quality packaging and integration. I'm not sure that was at risk in the first place though.
In fact, since they were able to go through this process to change the rules to allow themselves to go through this process to change the rules, why didn't they just change the rules the first time through? Why the other layers?
Bruce, you people (debian) have ignored usability issues for years. Debian has literally been the poster boy for Free Software arrogance and indifference towards the end-user's need for usable, consistant software that let's them get stuff done with a minimum of fuss. 7 years later, Debian still doesn't have a graphical installer. Does software created with those kinds of values really need to be forced on schoolchildren in Extrademura?
If Debian followers lobby politicians to replace Windows with their software, then they have earned an obligation to make that software work for the people who will be forced to use it. IMO if Debian proper passes the buck on usability, it doesn't deserve a place on the desktop, derivitive or otherwise.
I believe in the concept of Open Source, but I will not stand idly by while those in the FOSS community deprive end users of the Freedom of Usability. In my opinion, a public license that protects this freedom is long overdue and any restriction it enacts against those who would rob end-users of that freedom to be morally justified.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Your idea is a very noble one, but I have to ask you a few questions:
- Right now, I can use 'reportbug' to report problems related to:
- What about using the same 'reportbug' to interact with debianized software offered by third-parties? Hint: this already fails; one has to subscribe to the upstream package's mailing list temporarily, states their problem and hope that someone will get it.
- How would people be assured of the QA processes used by a non-Debian produced contrib and non-free repository? Hint: they would not. There is already absolutely zero guarantee that third-party packages will work with dependencies produced by the Debian Project.
- How would package GPG signing remain consistant? Right now, there is a package providing GPG keys of all registered developers and several packaging tools rely upon those "official developers' keys" to vouch for the QA's trustability. How would you ensure that trust coming from an entiry outside the Debian Project?
- The Debian Project already has a long backlog of people wanting to join in as a developer, but being discouraged because of the increasingly complicated applicaiton process. How would non-free.org be any different? Would it make it any easier to join in or would it be as anally retentive as the Debian Project's application procedure? How would you approve, for instance, an application from Opera Software to submit binary-only packages to non-free?
The separation of contrib and non-free (and integration of third-party deb's) is much more complicated than adding a few lines to sources.list, but this is something that nobody has addressed so far. I'd like to hear your answers on that.- main
- contrib
- non-free
- non-US/main
- non-US/contrib
- non-US/non-free
How would that tool keep on working, if contrib and non-free (not to mention the non-US stuff) would be handled by a completely separate team? Hint: it won't. Bugzilla already fails to work on Gnome products, because upstream regularly ignores reports from Debian users, claiming that they don't have time to deal with "distribution-specific bugs". I cannot imagine things turning otherwise, with an eventual excommunication of contrib and non-free out of the Debian Project.I suppose that an eventual non-free.org could adopt a model similar to Red Hat's Fedora (which started as an independant team packaging thrid-party software meeting strict QA standards), but even then, it leaves the issue of integrating with Debian development and user feedback tools very much unresolved.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
there's just one thing keeping me from using Debian, I've found it a bit clunky to get up a nice gui workstation system, I'll look at that new annacconda thing soon though, if it does it cool, also they need more support for more uptodate/bleeding edge systems, who wants to use all the old stuff in a workstation.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
Have you ever actually met the man and heard him rant? Most of his printed work is far from rant material. It's factual, positive and forward looking. Generally they are more positive than telling people in a Debian thread that you personally won't use Debian anymore.
Why am I labelled a troll for speaking up?
I don't know why. I would have moderated your post as flame bait. Wading into someone else's conversation about a social contract to tell them they are a bunch of elitists for thinking of pine as different from mutt due to likensing issues, crapping on a well respected member of their community and all that is simply infamatory.
You don't need to back down about elitism, you need to save it for the proper place. You might think long and hard about it first though. Consider what those supposed elitists are advocating, software freedom. Is that something you want to thwart? Very few actual linux users actually act the way you presume they do. I get tired of Bible thumpers on Burbon Street, but I always smile for them and pay some respect. They are out there doing things and might do some good. What good does it do to call them names?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, I could use Linux, with a pretty nice-looking user interface, all the applications I need (that's right, I don't do desktop publishing or video editing). It's rock stable, it's free, and I can have as much or as little UI candy as I want. Oh, sorry, I'll miss out on the vacuum cleaner and zooming effekcts of OS X. Gee, I sure miss THAT when doing useful work. Oh, yeah, I get rid of that stupid dock, too. You know, the one hailed by leading HCI experts as the biggest UI disaster in MacOS ever.
The biggest problem for me, however, is that in many cases none of the three release types (stable, unstable, testing) are what I want. Stable isn't just stable - it's a synonym for obsolete. For a server install an old install may in fact be a good idea - often rock-solid reliability is by far the most important criteria. But for a desktop, running "stable" means that my desktop applications can't read/write the document formats that more modern versions can, my application choices are fewer, they fail to provide critical functions to me, and so on. In short, "stable" is hopeless on a desktop. But my alternatives are testing and unstable, which get insufficient testing and are excessively risky; I certainly don't feel comfortable using them. Compare this to Red Hat / Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake, and some others; they have a timeline (say 6 - 12 months), test a combination far more than Debian's testing version gets, and then ship. For a desktop, this tends to produce a better results, because desktop users do want reliability (more than "testing" provides) but also need stronger functionality than old versions of OSS/FS programs than what "stable" provides. And desktop users have less trouble with more rapid updates, as long as they don't cost anything.
Am I free to use some other distribution? Yes! And I do.
But frankly, I wish Debian would create some level between stable and testing, that was frozen and tested on say a six-month increment and released. I'm interested in using Debian, but its current lack of something between "stable" and "testing" is keeping me from using it routinely. And I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only one; I don't see the success of Red Hat (for example) as being an accident. I don't see any fundamental licensing issue with an intermediate level - is there any possibility that one might be supported in the future? If it had that level, I think there'd be even more Debian users.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
"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 =
It's available in experimental. It probably hasn't hit the general user populace (and really hasn't hit those outside of the Debian userbase) but experimental is slated to take on certain roles once held by unstable. Any sort of -snapshot packages (basically cvs pulls that are pre-release) now go in to experimental rather than unstable. Unstable is for packages that the maintainer considers release quality but hasn't tested widely. Experimental is for when you're still working on the thing, but would like to allow testing anyway.
At least, that's the plan. It's pretty new but it seems to be working so far. Hopefully it'll lead to faster releases.
Anyhow, the xfree 4.3 packages are in experimental. The TODO list for those packages is posted in the subversion archive where the Debian packaging development is done (you can get to it from the Debian X Strikeforce webpage) so you can see how much is left before the packages migrate to unstable. As it is though, the 4.3 packages are there if you want them.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
So run testing on a desktop. Testing is fine for most desktop production uses. On my testing/unstable box, I've had no problems.
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
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
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.
- 10.2??? heck, i'm still using 10.1.4, net upgraded from 10.1
- works fine for me...
- but i wonder how long the updates will be available... i shudder to think what might happen if i have to do a reinstall and bring the system back up to snuff...
they are going to remove "non-free" documentation from debian ... so, you can install debian but you won't have documentation for gcc, textutils, fileutils &c. good idea.
It probably won't happen because the FSF will hopefully change the GFDL to make it a free software license. And you'd have Debian to thank for that for being the only guys to care about the issue.
If the FSF don't, then someone will package the docs outside of Debian and you'll get them via apt-get like you did before. Since you don't care about freedom why would you care where you get the package from?
Ask yourself why the FSF is documenting GPL'ed applications under a license that is non GPL compatible? That makes it impossible for anyone but them to cut & paste doc strings between an application and it's documentation, inhibiting forks.
First of all, is the release schedule of Debian really that vexing to your business requirements? I can see you having issues if a new major software revision comes out that supports a feature which would make things much easier for you, but does that really happen so often? I prefer the peace of mind that things will continue to function correctly.
:) I have also recently discovered a clone, runit, which is under a Free license and very tiny. I will be looking into this soon.
There are also options available. I have one machine that acts as a server for streaming MP3 and Webcam images, so it runs stable. However, it also acts as a playlist entry machine for the DJs, and Mozilla 1.0 has annoying bugs. I simply told APT that I wanted the Mozilla package from testing, and kept the rest of the system stable. A few other libraries also had to be upgraded, but if an important security problem came out for one of the "testing" packages, I could make a decision on what to do (install the new one from unstable, apt-get -b source my own package, etc.). I could have also used "apt-get -b source" in the first place to avoid upgrading libraries, which is what I do with GAIM.
I can't say I rely on the non-free archives so much. The only thing I use from non-free is daemontools, but I compile this myself, and of course it has never had any security problems
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
I'm glad you've had good experiences with it - but it just isn't what I want.
What I want is a fourth category between "testing" and "stable"; call it "ready" (as in "ready for use"). Take "testing" and put it through a month of testing specific functions (what's new, common errors, general pounding). NOT just a deadline that's passed - make sure the apps were run.
I can get that by using the for-profit distros, so I use them as my primary distros. If there were some category that fit my needs, I'd give Debian another try.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
At my office, which manages over 250 debian servers internationally, we call the debian sources by different names.
Stale, Flaky and Broken.
According to their official policy, natch.
This is not to say there's no place for usability guidelines in the overall structure, but I believe that Bruce has the right idea: the place for these decisions is in creating distributions, not in licensing. Sure, you've still got the same question of who decides, but at least you've got a much greater chance of maintaining consistency.