Re: Constitutional Amendment GR: Handling assets for the project

[Anthony Towns]

On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 02:44:50PM +0100, Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> Anthony Towns wrote:
> >On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 04:11:02PM +0100, Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> >> Would this GR be conducted by the outgoing secretary? If the reason for
> >> the disagreement is that the secretary has lost the confidence of a
> >> significant number of developers, that rule could make a bad situation
> >> worse.
> It might not be so simple, if for example the dispute was over who was
> eligible to vote.

The secretary doesn't determine who is eligible to vote, DAM does. Votes
are authenticated by valid gpg keys, which are provided by keyring-maint.

> I'm sure Debian would muddle through. On the other hand, one of the
> purposes of a written constitution is to be as helpful as possible in
> just such 'crises'.

Yeah. I'm not sure it's even possible to solve every potential
constitutional crisis though.

Cheers,
aj



signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: kernel firmwares: GR proposal

[MJ Ray]

Marco d'Itri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Yes, I would strongly object. I am very annoyed at people who consider
> some GPL'ed drivers to be contrib material because the hardware they
> support stores its proprietary firmware on the system hard disk instead
> of on a flash eeprom chip like some other hardware. As a contributor to
> some of these projects I consider this demeaning.

This shouldn't be a personal annoyance debate.  The increasing use of
firmware uploads from the kernel is something which should be addressed.
It's not one or two small corner cases any more - these are programs
and should be free software to be included in debian main.  A program
doesn't stop being a program because it runs on a different processor.

It's not different based on whether it's stored in hard disk or eeprom:
if programs for writing to flash eeprom chips are put into debian main,
they must be free software too.

> The only compromise I can see is a new archive section different from
> main, contrib or non-free which will be considered part of Debian and
> distributed on our CD and netboot images.

When I catch up with this list, I'll write that option up if no-one else
has done so.

[...]
> No, it's a contentious issue because some people are trying hard to
> change the values of Debian replacing what was a compromise widely
> accepted by everybody in Debian and most people outside Debian with
> mindlessly following their idea of the DFSG.

No, it's a contentious issue because some people are pushing hard to
change Debian's founding agreements to allow this because we've let
it sneak under the radar for far too long.  I'm all for giving people
time to work out licensing problems (as lawyers don't seem to move
very quickly) but maybe I should reconsider if 'we've been doing it
for so long, let's revise policy to match the bug' is the result.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Proposal: The DFSG do not require source code for data, including firmware

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 09:46:32PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 12:01:55AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > He has full control of it, in the sense that it is often binary only, and 
> > that
> > he produces it, and not some third party (like the operating system vendor).
> > Also, i believe that modifying the firmware, like you propose, usually voids
> > the waranty.
> 
> Replacing a supplied operating system by something totally different
> (like, say, Debian) often also voids warranty (or, at least, the right
> to tech support). How is that any different?

Well, hosing the firmware, and thus the method to reflash or bootup the board
results more often than not in an unusable piece of hardware.

Changing the operating system loaded by said firmware is not so dramatic, as
you can always fix it and stuff. This is not the case for firmware usually,
unless you know what you do, and have some heavy soldering or on-site flashing
equipement.

Friendly,

Sven Luther


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Constitutional Amendment GR: Handling assets for the project

[Manoj Srivastava]

Hi,

I am withdrawing the older version of my GR proposal, in
 favour of the new version, which has been secondedd by:

Don Armstrong
martin f krafft
Anthony Towns
Adrian von Bidder
Kalle Kivimaa
Anibal Monsalve Salazar

Steve Langasek has withdrawn his second of the first version,
 so now the first version withdrawn, but may still be preferred by the
 remaining seconds, who are:
 a) Martin Wuertele <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 b) Ian Jackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 c) "Benj. Mako Hill"   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 d) Alexander Zangerl   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

If anyone wishes to retain the older version on the ballot
 (which I hope they do not), it requires people to re-ratify and find
 a fifth proponent.

manoj
-- 
The more the change, the more it is the same thing.  -- Alphonse Karr
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C


pgpb2V64LmcWQ.pgp
Description: PGP signature