Debian Developers - Free Software and the Debian Social Contract

Author

Free Software and the Debian Social Contract

Andree Leidenfrost

2004-04-28, 10:33 am

I've been a Debian user for about eight years and have finally come
around to working on becoming a developer at the beginning of the year.

I would like to express my thoughts on the Social Contract and the
latest developments because the spirit of the Debian Social Contract has
always been one of the core attractions to Debian for me.

What is free software about? RMS has put it quite nicely (though
slightly over the top IMHO) in
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html by writing:

"Signing a typical software license agreement means betraying your
neighbor: ``I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so that I
can have a copy for myself.'' People who make such choices feel internal
psychological pressure to justify them, by downgrading the importance of
helping one's neighbors--thus public spirit suffers. This is
psychosocial harm associated with the material harm of discouraging use
of the program."

So, according to him, people are very important when it comes to free
software. This is reflected in the very name 'Debian Social Contract' -
social has to do with people and how they interact. The Debian Social
Contract states:

"We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software
community. We will place their interests first in our priorities."

This is also very much about people, which I personally like a lot.

If I now look at the current situation, I see a catch 22 situation:

We are obliged to look after the people that use Debian, and at the same
time we consider the DFSG to be applicable to everything that Debian
ships.

Why would this be a catch 22? Well, on one hand looking after the people
that use Debian clearly means to provide them with a well working
software system, and this does mean main. If, however, we now go and
remove a substantial portion of hardware support out of main, and even
if it ends up in non-free, this already violates the part of the Debian
Social Contract that I quoted above, because we substantially reduce the
usefulness of Debian for our users. (The situation for documentation is
comparable, though probably less severe.) But we can't win, can we? If
we do not exclude the non-DFSG-compliant firmware blobs we also violate
the Debian Social Contract.

I've thought about this over the past days and remembered the RMS quote
from above. The question, as I see it, really is: Why do we want
software to be free? My answer, to say it with RMS, would be: to help
other people. Very plain, very unorthodox. Do we really help other
people by removing lots of hardware support from main? And - equally
important - does it give any noticable additional freedom to people if
they have the source code for firmware that drives their hardware
devices?

Some people may answer yes to the latter. I believe, however, that this
is not necessarily the case: If I can give a program to my neighbour and
he or she can even modify it, this is surely a good a thing, and it
happens millions of times every year with free software like Debian. But
what do we really win if we have the source code of device drivers that
is only useful with one or maybe a handful of different devices? Does
this really mean a big win in terms of freedom? Or do we not rather
considerably limit the freedom of people by shipping a version of Debian
main that lacks substantial hardware support? Is it really worth it to
spend lots of effort into splitting things out into non-free (or even
someplace else), or would the effort not better be spent on increasing
people's freedom by making Debian even better than it already is?

I'm not really sure what the answers to these questions are. I simply
have the nagging feeling that we are doing a disservice to people and
thus violate the Debian Social Contract at a much more fundamental level
than would ever be possible by including things like firmware blobs in
main.

Don't get me wrong, though. I still believe that it would be in the
long-term benefit of everyone if all software including firmware was
free. I just believe that one has to choose one's battles. Maybe the
current battle is not the most beneficial one to foster the spirit of
free software.

Best regards
Andree
--
Andree Leidenfrost
Sydney - Australia

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Nathanael Nerode

2004-04-29, 12:34 pm

Andree Leidenfrost wrote:

<snip>
> And - equally
> important - does it give any noticable additional freedom to people if
> they have the source code for firmware that drives their hardware
> devices?
>
> Some people may answer yes to the latter.
Yep, absolutely.

> I believe, however, that this
> is not necessarily the case: If I can give a program to my neighbour and
> he or she can even modify it, this is surely a good a thing, and it
> happens millions of times every year with free software like Debian. But
> what do we really win if we have the source code of device drivers that
> is only useful with one or maybe a handful of different devices? Does
> this really mean a big win in terms of freedom?
Yes, it does. There is no difference in terms of freedom between software
deisgned to run on your DSP or video chip, and software designed to run on
your 486. There are people who would like to edit the former as well as
people who would like to edit the latter. All the same reasons and
arguments apply, without exception.

> Or do we not rather
> considerably limit the freedom of people by shipping a version of Debian
> main that lacks substantial hardware support?
No. Users of that hardware were already using non-free software; now, they
just *know* that they are.

I have implemented userland microcode loading for the tg3, r128, and radeon
drivers, only to realize that the r128 and radeon microcode doesn't appear
to have a valid licence to distribute (!), and that the tg3 microcode is
mostly unused.

I have already volunteered to improve the installer to allow loading
non-free material from a second CD or floppy, once there's a significant
amount of appropriately packaged material (which there isn't yet, so I'm
making some of it). Though I have a lot on my plate, and it would surely
get done faster if someone else did some of the work. :-)

> Is it really worth it to
> spend lots of effort into splitting things out into non-free (or even
> someplace else),
Hell yes.

> or would the effort not better be spent on increasing
> people's freedom by making Debian even better than it already is?
'making Debian better' does not necessarily increase anyone's freedom, if by
'making it better' you mean 'putting proprietary software into it'. :-P

> I'm not really sure what the answers to these questions are. I simply
> have the nagging feeling that we are doing a disservice to people and
> thus violate the Debian Social Contract at a much more fundamental level
> than would ever be possible by including things like firmware blobs in
> main.
No.

> Don't get me wrong, though. I still believe that it would be in the
> long-term benefit of everyone if all software including firmware was
> free. I just believe that one has to choose one's battles. Maybe the
> current battle is not the most beneficial one to foster the spirit of
> free software.
The "current battle", in my opinion, is over honesty.

Do we admit that certain hardware can't currently be used without
proprietary software? Or do we lie about it?

I think that honesty serves the cause of free software, and lying doesn't.
Maybe this is simple-minded of me. :-)

> Best regards
> Andree

--
There are none so blind as those who will not see.

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