Re: Turning GNU into a bottom-up organization

[Samuel Thibault]

Alfred M. Szmidt, le dim. 27 oct. 2019 13:07:35 -0400, a ecrit:
> > My view is that when I burn a Debian CD, on it there is only free
> > software and links to non-free software (which is *not* on the
> > CD). And that is what the Debian social contract allows.
> 
> That is the view of the GNU project too.  We don't recommend Debian
> _exactly_ because of this.

So we agree to disagree on the GNU vs Debian objectives, good.

>    What is important here is this:
> 
>    > And that is the exact type word wiggling that we shouldn't accept
>    > here, and the exact reason why this project is run the way it is run.
> 
>    And that is where a social contract would allow to enforce it, without
>    the need for stubborn governance which hurts in other ways.
> 
> The Debian Social Contract has failed to do so,

It has not failed in any way. It has achieved what it was made for by
Debian people. The fact that GNU aims for something else is completely
independent of that.

> What you are suggesting would lead to the GNU project having a
> non-free.gnu.org

Where in the *hell* did you read I meant that?

Re-read what I wrote from the start instead of extrapolating, very
please. I took extra care when I wrote it, but you seem to have ignored
that: “I'm not saying the Debian Social Contract in particular,
there are point in there which the GNU project doesn't agree on ; I am
saying a document with the same type of content: writing down the MUST
principles of the project”
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00037.html
I was *precisely* thinking about that non-free thing, which Debian
allows but GNU does not want, which is fine, that's the GNU goal, I'm
*not* arguing about that. All I'm arguing about is that the Debian
Social Contract allowed Debian to keep on its goal without the need
for stubborn governance. That includes non-free, yes, because it was
_written_ there right from the start: “we support their use and
provide infrastructure for non-free packages”.
https://www.debian.org/social_contract.1.0.en.html

> the Debian project has failed to avoid,

It has not *failed* to avoid, it was *defined* to provide this kind of
support.

> The only way tackle non-free software is to explicitly reject it, at
> all times.

Then we can write that in a GNU social contract, instead of having to
rely on stubborn governance.

Writing down the MUSTs to have the community enforce it collectively is
better than needing somebody with a stick.

Samuel