The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
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Re: CALL FOR VOTES: First of two votes on social contract

> > Are you talking about unmodified "binary" or "source" forms?  This does allow
> > unmodified source, as long as it permits patches.
> 
> Patches are always allowed and are never covered by the original copyright.
> They are, after all, only a description of how to changes something.
> 
> If the author doesn't want modified source (or binaries created from that
> modified source) to be redistributed, then that is their right.  

True. 

> I don't
> see why Debian should disallow such software (which is freely redistributable
> in its original form) from the main distribution.  

I strongly disagree.  The package can always go into non-free, or another 
"side distribution" - perhaps from a value-added distributor, such as the 
company you are putting together.  (Try dpkg-ftp-x - it has great support 
for this)

> I'm not trying to
> encourage this.  I'm trying to give Debian the widest selection of software
> that I can.

We already have a mechanism to handle this - "non-free".  There aren't any 
restrictions on non-free.  AFAIK, pretty well anything that's legal in the 
U.S.
can go there.

If somebody considers themselves a "free software author", and we put their
software in non-free or contrib, there is definitely stigma attached to that.
If we allowed stuff where the author is trying to exert control over their
code, we remove the stigma, so few authors will want to change their licenses
to make them 'truly free'.

If this really bothers you, let's add it to the vote.  I don't think you'll
get any support though (not from me anyways).

Cheers,

 - Jim

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