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: contrib/non-free policy

From: Milan Zamazal <pdm@fi.muni.cz>
> I've ever thought the main purpose of Debian is to provide as good as
> possible environment for Linux users.

Sigh. Maybe this conversation belongs on the "breaking-in-new-developers"
mailing list. I have it so often.

No, that is not the main purpose of Debian.

Debian is a freely usable and redistributable Linux system. Not the best 
possible collection of software, but the best that is freely usable and
redistributable. We put down guidelines about what "free" means to us.
We voted on them. We told the rest of the world about them. Were were you?

The point of this policy is that you can take a Debian system and
derive a commercial product from it, or duplicate it and give it away,
etc., without being concerned that you will be violating a software
license. We've also proven that you can build a whole system that does
real work just from free software. Not even FSF did that, and most
Linux distributions haven't kept themselves free.

> Yes, we want to support free software, but I think it shouldn't be
> the *primary and only* target.

It's the primary target. It's not the only one, but it's primary.
We are not intending to be the most popular Linux system, or even
the third most popular, although we'd welcome a commercial system
derived from Debian that became that popular. A commercial system
derived from Debian could include all of the non-free stuff it wanted,
and we wouldn't complain. Just don't make us put it in Debian.

> I really don't know, why almost free programs couldn't be on Debian
> CDs.

Well, you should start by reading the "Social Contract" on our web site.
Then, pick up a bit of our history.

> For most users differences doesn't matter

The license matters to _US_. If the users want a distribution with
different licenses, they are free to choose Red Hat or Caldera, which
have tons of non-free software in them. Why must we be like all the
otheres? Debian is respected _because_ it doesn't contain that non-free
software.

I'm sorry if my tone is a bit harried.  I'm afraid I'm getting
exasperated with new developers who decide their first mission is to
change our free software policy. I'd prefer to see them spend some time
contributing to the project before they tilt at this particular
windmill.

	Thanks

	Bruce
-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP   bruce@pixar.com   510-215-3502
Finger bruce@master.debian.org for PGP public key.
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