Re: A GNU “social contract”?

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Andreas,

I think this is a really good starting point for getting feedback from
other GNU maintainers, developers, stakeholders to see whether they
would agree with this GNU mission statement. And discuss with the
broader community whether it actually says what we want it to (what in
it makes it real GNU and not some generic "open source" thing)?

For example I think this is one of those things:

> Unless the GNU Project deems that a different choice furthers the advancement
> of free software, all software written by the GNU Project is distributed
> under /copyleft licenses/, designed to ensure that developers cannot strip off
> users' freedom from GNU software.

But it also looks like a "policy" issue, that shouldn't really be in
the social contract itself. This feels more like something that should
follow from the mission statement/social contract in the context of
working on actual software.

What are other policies that would/should follow from the social
issues? Or should maybe be in the contract itself?

For example one core policy seems to be that we prefer the copyright to
be held individuals or the FSF (instead of being held by corporations)
so that the user freedoms are actually upheld when copyleft is used. Is
that something that should be in the social contract? Does it follow
from what is in it now? Or should we add something to make the
(abstract) idea clear? (e.g. The GNU Project prefers policies that
encourage and enable developers to actively defend the users' Freedom.)

Cheers,

Mark