Updated draft of social contract changes

External Since: Sep 17, 2005 Posts: 303

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This is an updated draft of the proposal I posted this morning.

I've fixed several errors in part five.

Let's hold off on seconding this proposal until the 16th. There's a
non-zero chance that it will need to be changed again.

The rationale for this proposal is: clean up the social contract and
bring its words in line with the way we have been interpreting it.

- --

I propose the following resolution:

We will replace our social contract with two documents, as specified
by the recent constitutional amendment. The first replacement document
will be the social contract below, and the second replacement document
will be the Debian Free Software Guidelines extracted from the remainder
of the original social contract.

Here's the replacement for the social contract:

Debian's Social Contract

The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common
cause to create a free operating system. This is the "social contract"
we offer to the free software community.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Social Contract" with the Free Software Community

1. Debian will remain 100% free software`

Debian exists to distribute a general purpose system composed of
entirely free software. As there are many definitions of free
software, we use the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" to determine
if software is free. We will also support our users who develop
and run other software on Debian -- free or non-free -- but we will
never make the system depend on an item of non-free software.

2. We will give back to the free software community

When we write new components of the Debian system, we will license
them in a manner consistent with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
We will make the best system we can, so that free works will be
widely distributed and used. We will communicate things such
as bug fixes, improvements and user requests to the "upstream"
authors of works included in our system.

3. We will not hide problems

We will keep our entire bug report database open for public view
at all times. Reports that people file online will promptly become
visible to others.

4. 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 environments. We will not object to non-free
works that are intended to be used on Debian systems, or attempt to
charge a fee to people who create or use such works. We will allow
others to create distributions containing both the Debian system and
other works, without any fee from us. In furtherance of these goals,
we will provide an integrated system of high-quality materials with
no legal restrictions that would prevent such uses of the system.

5. Programs that doesn't meet our free-software standards

We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of software
that doesn't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We
support interoperability standards such as "Linux Standard Base", and
will accept bug reports where our system violates those standards.
To make our system more attractive to people with mild dependencies
on non-free software, we have created "contrib" and "non-free"
areas in our internet archive. The software in these directories is
not needed by most people, and we do not guarantee all software in
the non-free area may be distributed in other ways. Thus, although
we're working to reduce people's dependence on non-free software,
we support users who are still dependent. Additionally, we will
work to find, package and support free alternatives to non-free
software so people who use only free software can work with users
of non-free software.

- --
Raul

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External Since: Nov 25, 2006 Posts: 86

On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 12:44:35AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> Let's hold off on seconding this proposal until the 16th. There's a
> non-zero chance that it will need to be changed again.

ack.

> "Social Contract" with the Free Software Community
>
> 1. Debian will remain 100% free software`
^ Bonus backtick here.

> Debian exists to distribute a general purpose system composed of

s/general purpose/general-purpose/ ? Google results are mixed.

> 3. We will not hide problems
>
> We will keep our entire bug report database open for public view
> at all times. Reports that people file online will promptly become
> visible to others.

s/promptly become visible to others/become visible to others promptly/
sounds better to me, but I don't have any good reasons why.

Thanks,
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish DeleteThis @debian.org> <hamish DeleteThis @cloud.net.au>

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