Re: General Resolution: Removing non-free

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Tue, Jun 06, 2000 at 10:16:58PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> 4. This clause was never debated when the Social Contract was created.

this is not true. as i recall it, that clause (and the issues leading
up to it) was one of the most contentious. at the time, some were in
favour of being 100% free software, a very few were in favour of making
no distinction, and the vast majority were in favour of the compromise
position as summarised in that clause - i.e. that we will support
non-free software but it will always be secondary in importance (at
best) to free software.

we debated the DFSG for over a month, with every point being discussed
until we were all nearly sick of it. then we voted on it.


> At least I cannot find evidence of much discussion on it in the
> sketchy archives of e-mail at that time that exist today.  

i have complete archives of debian-private dating back to the first
message sent on the list. if you want, i can send you a couple of months
worth around the time we debated it.

craig

--
craig sanders