Re: Are online services also software for Debian's rules?

[Russ Allbery]

Miles Fidelman  writes:

> Getting past all the obfuscatory count and counterpoint, there seem to
> be two clear questions on the table:

> 1.  Given a piece of FOSS client software, that has no purpose other
> than to interface with a proprietary back-end service (say a FOSS
> twitter GUI), should that be considered "free software" for the purposes
> of placement in main vs. contrib vs. non-free?  (Or alternatively, where
> should it reside?)

> 2.  Given a piece of FOSS client software that interfaces to, among
> other things, a proprietary back-end service (e.g., a multi-protocol
> chat interface that includes AIM and MS Messenger among the back-ends it
> supports), be placed in contrib or non-free, simply because its
> description mentions those services?

The point that I think may not yet be clear enough is that if the answer
to 2 is that such software should not be moved to contrib (as has
historically always been the case), the answer to 1 *also* has to be that
the software is not moved to contrib.  Because the way you get software of
type 2 is that it uses a variety of libraries of type 1, so if those
libraries are moved to contrib, the main software of type 2 would also
have to be moved to contrib.

Writing a library specifically to interact with a non-free service is
*good software engineering* (do one thing and do it well), and the correct
way to implement software of type 2.  So unless you want to see all
software of type 2 kicked out of Debian, at least libraries of type 1 also
need to be allowed in Debian.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   

Re: Are online services also software for Debian's rules?

[Russ Allbery]

"Dr. Bas Wijnen"  writes:

> Also, I don't want to move lots of software to contrib.  I would much
> rather have it fixed by removing the support for the non-free services,
> or by having plugin systems that allow only the non-free-interfacing
> part to be in contrib.

I believe this would be hugely counter-productive for free software.  It
would hurt us way more than it would hurt proprietary services.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   

Re: On the Anti Harassment Team

[Laura Arjona Reina]

Hi all

El 13/08/17 a las 21:28, Sotirios Vrachas escribió:
>> 3) Members: the job that our team does is quite taxing and in order to be
>> responsive we would like to have new members, and work on a rotational
>> basis (i.e. two or three years of term, not forever) to avoid burn-out.
>> Additionally, we believe that we need extra training to be better prepared
>> to handling issues, this is something that we want to work on.
> 
> Rotation after two or three years requires a long term commitment from
> new members. Six months shifts with the relevant training might be a lot
> less taxing to everyone.

Thanks for caring.

I wouldn't ask anybody a mid-long term commitment from the beginning: we are
volunteers, it's perfectly ok to take a break or step down from the team
for any reason, at any time.

The comment about 2-3 year membership is more intended to the project to take
into account that even in the case that team members would feel ok and
work fine, they probably will need a break "soon". And then you need to
sum the amount of time of finding new person(s) to join the team, and leave
them a bit of margin to get accostumed to the team and participate without
feeling the pressure to be in the "first line".

In fact, I think the same for any Debian team, not only Anti Harassment Team...

Best regards
-- 
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona

Re: Are online services also software for Debian's rules?

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/13/17 1:05 PM, Dr. Bas Wijnen wrote:


My purpose of this thread (which is a question asked elsewhere) is to find out
if there is consensus about this issue.  If there isn't, I don't want to bother
everyone with a mass bug report.  Which, as Russ pointed out, would be a pretty
large operation.

Also, I don't want to move lots of software to contrib.  I would much rather
have it fixed by removing the support for the non-free services, or by having
plugin systems that allow only the non-free-interfacing part to be in contrib.
However, that is still a large operation, so I still do not want to do a mass
bug filing unless there is consensus that it should be done.  So far, it
doesn't seem like there is consensus at all.


Getting past all the obfuscatory count and counterpoint, there seem to 
be two clear questions on the table:


1.  Given a piece of FOSS client software, that has no purpose other 
than to interface with a proprietary back-end service (say a FOSS 
twitter GUI), should that be considered "free software" for the purposes 
of placement in main vs. contrib vs. non-free?  (Or alternatively, where 
should it reside?)


2.  Given a piece of FOSS client software that interfaces to, among 
other things, a proprietary back-end service (e.g., a multi-protocol 
chat interface that includes AIM and MS Messenger among the back-ends it 
supports), be placed in contrib or non-free, simply because its 
description mentions those services?


Personally, I don't really care, and could argue both points either 
way.  But they are clear policy questions that might be of interest to 
packagers.


Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: On the Anti Harassment Team

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Sun, Aug 13 2017, Margarita Manterola wrote:

> 4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both
> because it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we
> contact them.  We asked people to suggest other names.  The current
> best suggestion that we have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with
> resp...@debian.org as the alias (not created yet). This discussion is
> still open and we welcome other suggestions and ideas (contact us via
> antiharassm...@debian.org ).

On the other hand, having a team labelled "anti-harassment" immediately
reassures people that the project takes harassment seriously.  If I
needed to contact the team, I would wonder whether a respect and
inclusion team was really interested in my case.  But that's just me.

-- 
Sean Whitton

Re: Are online services also software for Debian's rules?

[Dr. Bas Wijnen]

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 12:07:51PM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
>  ❦ 12 août 2017 09:12 GMT, "Dr. Bas Wijnen"  :
> > No, it doesn't.  2.2.1 says "None of the packages in the main archive area
> > require software outside of that area to function."  In other words, if
> > software outside of main would not exist, the program would still work.  
> > But if
> > that software wouldn't exist, the non-free service would not be available 
> > and
> > the free client would be useless.
> 
> Then, please file bugs against offending packages, severity
> serious. Otherwise, all this discussion is useless. A starting point
> could be golang-github-datadog-datadog-go and golang-google-api
> packages.

My purpose of this thread (which is a question asked elsewhere) is to find out
if there is consensus about this issue.  If there isn't, I don't want to bother
everyone with a mass bug report.  Which, as Russ pointed out, would be a pretty
large operation.

Also, I don't want to move lots of software to contrib.  I would much rather
have it fixed by removing the support for the non-free services, or by having
plugin systems that allow only the non-free-interfacing part to be in contrib.
However, that is still a large operation, so I still do not want to do a mass
bug filing unless there is consensus that it should be done.  So far, it
doesn't seem like there is consensus at all.

Thanks,
Bas


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Re: On the Anti Harassment Team

[Sotirios Vrachas]

> 3) Members: the job that our team does is quite taxing and in order to be
> responsive we would like to have new members, and work on a rotational
> basis (i.e. two or three years of term, not forever) to avoid burn-out.
> Additionally, we believe that we need extra training to be better prepared
> to handling issues, this is something that we want to work on.

Rotation after two or three years requires a long term commitment from
new members. Six months shifts with the relevant training might be a lot
less taxing to everyone.

Sotiri



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Re: On the Anti Harassment Team

[Sotirios Vrachas]

>> 4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both because
>> it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we contact
them.  We
>> asked people to suggest other names.  The current best suggestion that we
>> have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with resp...@debian.org as the alias
>> (not created yet). This discussion is still open and we welcome other
>> suggestions and ideas (contact us via antiharassm...@debian.org ).
>
> Emphasising "respect" may be problematic.  It's something abusive
> people often demand when they encounter resistance.

Agree.

> You could use "safety" or "welfare" - but that might be claiming too
> wide a role.

"safety" might be confused with "security", and a message to
"saf...@debian.org" might be more appropriately related for the safety
of the Debian Project and its user.

"Tranquility Team" with tranquil...@debian.org might reflect what this
groups is interested in.

Sotiri



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Re: On the Anti Harassment Team

[Ben Hutchings]

On Sun, 2017-08-13 at 17:11 +0200, Margarita Manterola wrote:
[...]
> 4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both because
> it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we contact them.  We
> asked people to suggest other names.  The current best suggestion that we
> have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with resp...@debian.org as the alias
> (not created yet). This discussion is still open and we welcome other
> suggestions and ideas (contact us via antiharassm...@debian.org ).

Emphasising "respect" may be problematic.  It's something abusive
people often demand when they encounter resistance.

You could use "safety" or "welfare" - but that might be claiming too
wide a role.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
If you seem to know what you are doing, you'll be given more to do.



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On the Anti Harassment Team

[Margarita Manterola]

During DebConf17 there was a BOF about the Anti-Harassment team. You can
find links to slides, text, video and collaborative pad of the discussion
in our wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/AntiHarassment .

We presented a status report of the issues that had been handled during the
past year as well as invited participants to comment on some questions
related to the team.  These are the conclusions from that discussion.

1) Scope and Powers: the team is in charge of mediating between developers
but doesn't have any actual powers, it can only recommend actions to other
delegates (listmasters, DAM, etc), but it's on the delegates to take
action. There are advantages and disadvantages to this model, but after
discussing it, we ended up deciding to keep going as we are.

2) Activity reporting: we plan to do an annual or semi-annual report to the
project, similar to the one presented in the BOF.

3) Members: the job that our team does is quite taxing and in order to be
responsive we would like to have new members, and work on a rotational
basis (i.e. two or three years of term, not forever) to avoid burn-out.
Additionally, we believe that we need extra training to be better prepared
to handling issues, this is something that we want to work on.

4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both because
it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we contact them.  We
asked people to suggest other names.  The current best suggestion that we
have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with resp...@debian.org as the alias
(not created yet). This discussion is still open and we welcome other
suggestions and ideas (contact us via antiharassm...@debian.org ).

Let's keep being excellent to each other,
Laura & Marga from the Anti-Harassment team