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Debian Prepares To Vote On Non-Free Software
DJFelix writes "Manoj Srivastava, Debian Project Secretary, has posted a proposed General Resolution regarding the handling of the non-free section of Debian. This is very important to me, as I am a Debian maintainer who only maintains non-free packages. If you are a Debian non-free maintainer or Debian non-free user who does not want to see the non-free section disappear from Debian, I highly suggest you get involved."
*Amendment Text The actual text of the amendment is:
Propose that the Debian project resolve that:
Acknowledging that some of our users continue to require the use of
programs that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, we
reaffirm our commitment to providing the contrib and non-free areas in
our archive for packaged versions of such software, and to providing the
use of our infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing
lists) to help with the maintenance of non-free software packages.*
seems to me that it's about using debians resources on making them packages available.
whats the easiest way to vote that "hell yes, It's good to have them?"
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Voting begins on Sunday, March 7 at 23:59:59 UTC.
Voting ends on Sunday, March 21 at 23:59:59 UTC.
Link: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002
How to Vote: http://www.debian.org/vote/howto_vote
-- [mf] BM
The proposal is also to drop support for the non-free section. What, exactly, this entails is not completely clear to me (and I'm a Debian developer), but at the least, I think it means no guarantees of security updates or even bug fixes.
Also, the non-free repository is currently mentioned by the Debian Social Contract, which is part of the Debian Constitution, so it has to be there. This proposal removes it from the Social Contract, clearly opening the door for the repository to be removed entirely in the future. (Which may be just as well if there are no security updates.)