Russ Allbery dijo [Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 12:39:50PM -0800]: > Bill Allombert <ballo...@debian.org> writes: > > > Much less, because there have been other laws proposal that could affect > > us and we have never put out a similar statement so nobody should expect > > Debian to make one now.
Yes. We did discuss on the comparison between the movement that many of our free software-affilliated European nationals carried out ~18 years ago, when software patents were discussed. I agree back then Debian didn't produce a "project statement", and the level of involvement from many of us was way higher. Of course, we cannot directly compare -- many of us currently in our mid-to-late 40s were... (counting with my fingers...) roughly in our mid-to-late 20s and had more time and energy. And, again, I can only judge as an outsider, as I am neither an European citizen, nor lived close to any place where I could attend a swpat demonstration (although did participate in some local when SOPA/PIPA lookalike laws were discussed). Anyway, I'm sidetracking... > Yes. Debian is organized around producing a free software distribution, > not around legal or policy advocacy. It is normal that organizations that > are not involved in politics (particularly transnational volunteer > organizations like Debian) don't try to comment on legislation in > particular jurisdictions. This is not something that I think we should > normally do. We should have exceptional clarity about our position and a > clear alignment between the legislation and Debian's interests before we > consider making a statement. > > I think it's *possible* that condition applies here, but I'm dubious. > I've previously supported Debian making other essentially political > statements and was subsequently convinced that I was probably wrong to do > so. > > Given that, if we say anything at all, I would prefer to make as minimal > and focused of a statement as possible, staying well within our area of > direct expertise and not getting into analysis of the meaning of > legislation. While there are people within the Debian Project who are > qualified to do that, the *project* is not, and there are other advocacy > organizations that do this type of lobbying regularly who are > better-positioned to analyze the legislation in detail and provide > feedback from a free software perspective. This is also something we discussed before sending this call for votes. But how can we gauge whether the project is OK with issuing political statements or not? The only tool we were able to find is a GR. This, however, _is_ something I want to insist on: I don't think we should fear GRs. I am of the opinion that we should hold more GRs, that they should guide and aid more of our project decisions -- GRs should not be divisive or "nuclear", but a tool for gauging project acceptance of an idea. And, while quite expectedly, I intend to vote our (Santiago's) original proposed text as the first option, I will also be happy if the outcome is "further discussion": I prefer for the project to decide "this is not something our project will engage in" than to do so by omission.
