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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."
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.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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".
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 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.