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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."
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();
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.
Ok, I'll be fair.. I have woody on my laptop.
[SNL] "Tommy, dude, tell me you got that on tape!" [/SNL] =P
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
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."
Because it goes against the very philosophy of Debian, right down to its initial charter if you want to go read it. Branden is one of the few people who actually still give a damn about what the project was originally founded for. He produces quality work (the Debian X packages are top notch, and he basically manages the porting work to other arch's because XFree puts out unportable crap) and he sticks to his ideals in the face of criticism.
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.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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)
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.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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.
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".
I'm the guy who put these policies in writing for Debian. I had the job of building the distribution, and these policies were the ones that would allow us to build it as best we could. If you were to take the time to do the job for a while, you'd probably come to the same conclusions.
Perhaps it's easier to think about when considering the patents and standards situation. We could make excellent standards incorporating all sorts of patents with all sorts of royalties. From an abstract engineering standpoint they'd be the best possible, but from an engineering practicality standpoint they'd be useless.Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Depending on what you're doing, check out the "testing" and "unstable" branches of Debian. They have much newer software packages, but are not in a stable release. Many regard these as more stable than, for instance, a Red Hat "stable" release.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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.
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.
And to make my jest even more serious...
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?
do() || do_not();
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
Bruce Perens.
IMO this mission lies with the Debian derivative rather than with Debian. Like Libranet and Knoppix, for example.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
But keep in mind that Richard's goal wasn't just good software; he was also mourning the loss of a community that he felt had been caused by software becoming unfree. The community is just as much a goal as the software.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
To make your jest serious: This is the trail that Richard Stallman proceeded down in about 1984. He wanted good software, and felt that the complications of copyright (and the business model that usually came along with copyright) made good software so much more difficult to produce.
Kinda ironic how much time and effort that should be going toward writing software is now consumed by the game of armchair copyright lawyer.
I want good software, and am sick and tired of having to pass on the right solution because it doesn't pass the purity test, or it is infected with a viral license, or it isn't free (or Free (or Phree)) enough, or it is "tainted", or it undermines our whole economic system, or
Enough with the licenses already. Personally I prefer the No problem Bugroff license. (mostly because it wastes less space in the source files than the GPL (or even MIT) licenses), but have adopted the following as a general rule:
The more fanatic someone is about software licensing, the more likely that their software isn't worth bothering with.
This applies equally to the BSA jackals and the GNU/Hippies. It turns out to be a pretty reliable guide.
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 see the users of Debian to be the creators of these free and non-free derivative distributions, and the users that are drawn into Linux through them. Bruce mentions two of those distros, but Xandros is the one that specifically comes to my mind.
(Disclaimer: I am a hardware engineer, and don't really mess much with the innards of software. I just want an OS that is clean and works.)
The Xandros distribution was and is very appealing to me because of its ease of use and installation (like Lindows), but it doesn't have as many of the downsides of the other "easy to use" Linux disto (Lindows). It was also very important to me to have the ability to easily expand beyond what the commercial package offered, and apt-get was the program that I felt would provide this.
After considering Xandros for the past year, however, and realizing that I don't truly need Crossover Office at home (I need WineX, but free software already covers my business application needs), I decided to "take the plunge" and start directly with Debian. I built my first Linux machine using Debian last weekend.
So, I guess, I am a Debian "user". I read and agreed to their social contract before I chose their software. I use Linux because of Debian.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Actually I do it the opposite. If someone pays me, then I'll use the GPL. But stuff that I do on my free time on weekends because it's fun, that I give away with as few strings as a possibly can.
If someone doesn't like it, then can always pay me to give them a GPL licensed copy of my stuff...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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.
I agree, that Debian has some problems with usability. While there are some things it does very well usability-wise, including the menu system, the alternatives system, the stock kernels, the kernel-package and patch system, and conffiles, it does lack cohesiveness in other ways. A big part of this is that the project is so damn big, it's basically impossible to wrangle anything so complex and difficult as usability guidelines (although I've considered trying to write some myself, but have no idea where to start).
On the other hand, Debian does provide options to do some things rather well. You can install discover and have hardware autodetection if you want it. You could have used PGI in the past to get yourself that graphical installer with no real fuss. The problem is the plethora of choices and sorting through them, not ignoring the users. I would very much like to see the usability of Debian extended (the new installer does have a gtk frontend, by the way) but the problem is, as usual, both related to politics and manpower.
Ultimately, I'd love to hear suggestions on ways that Debian could improve usability. I personally think it's a power user's dream come true in terms of usability. How would you improve it, beyond a graphical installer? Hardware autodetection is also, I believe, a standard component of the new installer, so don't list that please.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"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."