General Resolution: Lenny and resolving DFSG violations

Time Line

Proposal and amendment Friday, 24 Oct 2008 Friday, 14 Nov 2008
Discussion Period: Friday, 14 Nov 2008 Wednesday, 10 Dec 2008
Voting Period 00:00:01 UTC on Sunday, 14 Dec 2008 23:59:59 UTC on Saturday, 27 Dec 2008

Proposal A Proposer

Robert Millan [rmh@debian.org]

Proposal A Seconds

  1. Bas Wijnen [wijnen@debian.org]
  2. Manoj Srivastava [srivasta@debian.org]
  3. Holger Levsen [holger@debian.org]
  4. Peter Samuelson [peters@debian.org]
  5. Hubert Chan [uhoreg@debian.org]
  6. Rémi Vanicat [vanicat@debian.org]

Proposal A

Choice 1.
The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the resolution, post-ambles to the resolution, abstracts, fore-words, after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls, arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote mailing list archives for details.

Reaffirm the Social Contract

  1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free software community (Social Contract #4);

  2. We acknowledge that we promised to deliver a 100% free operating system (Social Contract #1);

  3. Given that we have known for two previous releases that we have non-free bits in various parts of Debian, and a lot of progress has been made, and we are almost to the point where we can provide a free version of the Debian operating system, we will delay the release of Lenny until such point that the work to free the operating system is complete (to the best of our knowledge as of 1 November 2008).

Proposal B Proposer

Robert Millan [rmh@debian.org]

Proposal B Seconds

  1. Manoj Srivastava [srivasta@debian.org]
  2. Holger Levsen [holger@debian.org]
  3. Peter Samuelson [peters@debian.org]
  4. Hubert Chan [uhoreg@debian.org]
  5. Rémi Vanicat [vanicat@debian.org]
  6. Frans Pop [fjp@debian.org]

Proposal B

Choice 2.
The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the resolution, post-ambles to the resolution, abstracts, fore-words, after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls, arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote mailing list archives for details.

Allow Lenny to release with proprietary firmware

  1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free software community (Social Contract #4);

  2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel firmware issue; most of the issues that were outstanding at the time of the last stable release have been sorted out. However, new issues in the kernel sources have cropped up fairly recently, and these new issues have not yet been addressed;

  3. We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the progress made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian relative to the Etch release in Lenny (to the best of our knowledge as of 1 November 2008);

  4. We give priority to the timely release of Lenny over sorting every bit out; for this reason, we will treat removal of sourceless firmware as a best-effort process, and deliver firmware as part of Debian Lenny as long as we are legally allowed to do so.

Proposal C Proposer

Robert Millan [rmh@debian.org]

Proposal C Seconds

  1. Holger Levsen [holger@debian.org]
  2. Peter Samuelson [peters@debian.org]
  3. Hubert Chan [uhoreg@debian.org]
  4. Rémi Vanicat [vanicat@debian.org]
  5. Frans Pop [fjp@debian.org]

Proposal C

Choice 3.
The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the resolution, post-ambles to the resolution, abstracts, fore-words, after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls, arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote mailing list archives for details.

Allow Lenny to release with DFSG violations

  1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free software community (Social Contract #4);

  2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel firmware issue; however, they are not yet finally sorted out;

  3. We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the progress made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian relative to the Etch release in Lenny (to the best of our knowledge as of 1 November 2008);

  4. We give priority to the timely release of Lenny over sorting every bit out; for this reason, we will treat removal of sourceless firmware as a best-effort process.

Proposal D Proposer

Andreas Barth [aba@debian.org]

Proposal D Seconds

  1. Holger Levsen [holger@debian.org]
  2. Rémi Vanicat [vanicat@debian.org]
  3. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [tolimar@debian.org]
  4. Reinhard Tartler [siretart@debian.org]
  5. Bernd Zeimetz [bzed@debian.org]
  6. Neil McGovern [neilm@debian.org]

Proposal D

Choice 4.
The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the resolution, post-ambles to the resolution, abstracts, fore-words, after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls, arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote mailing list archives for details.

Empower the release team to decide about allowing DFSG violations

  1. Debian's priorities are our users and free software. We don't trade them against each other. However, while getting a release out of the door, decisions need to be made about how to get a rock-stable release of the high quality Debian is known for, release more or less on time, and to minimize the usage of problematic software. We acknowledge that there is more than just one minefield our core developers and the release team are working on.

  2. We as Developers at large continue to trust our release team to follow all these goals, and therefore encourage them to continue making case-by-case decisions as they consider fit, and if necessary we authorize these decisions.

Proposal E Proposer

Manoj Srivastava [srivasta@debian.org]

Proposal E Seconds

  1. Robert Millan [rmh@debian.org]
  2. Bernd Zeimetz [bzed@debian.org]
  3. Neil McGovern [neilm@debian.org]
  4. John H. Robinson, IV [jaqque@debian.org]
  5. Lars Wirzenius [liw@debian.org]
  6. Damyan Ivanov [dmn@debian.org]
  7. Colin Tuckley [colin@debian.org]
  8. Pierre Habouzit [madcoder@debian.org]
  9. Gunnar Wolf [gwolf@debian.org]

Proposal E

Choice 5.
The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the resolution, post-ambles to the resolution, abstracts, fore-words, after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls, arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote mailing list archives for details.

Assume blobs comply with GPL unless proven otherwise

  1. We affirm that our Priorities are our users and the free software community (Social Contract #4);

  2. We acknowledge that there is a lot of progress in the kernel firmware issue; most of the issues that were outstanding at the time of the last stable release have been sorted out. However, new issues in the kernel sources have cropped up fairly recently, and these new issues have not yet been addressed;

  3. We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the progress made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian relative to the Etch release in Lenny (to the best of our knowledge as of 1 November 2008);

  4. We give priority to the timely release of Lenny over sorting every bit out; for this reason, we will treat removal of sourceless firmware as a best-effort process, and deliver firmware as part of Debian Lenny as long as we are legally allowed to do so, and the firmware is distributed upstream under a license that complies with the DFSG.

Proposal F Proposer

Peter Palfrader [weasel@debian.org]

Proposal F Seconds

  1. Holger Levsen [holger@debian.org]
  2. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [tolimar@debian.org]
  3. Bernd Zeimetz [bzed@debian.org]
  4. Frans Pop [fjp@debian.org]
  5. Colin Tuckley [colin@debian.org]
  6. Russ Allbery [rra@debian.org]
  7. Martin Michlmayr [tbm@debian.org]
  8. Steve McIntyre [93sam@debian.org]
  9. Mark Hymers [mhy@debian.org]
  10. Moritz Muehlenhoff [jmm@debian.org]
  11. Ben Pfaff [pfaffben@debian.org]
  12. Cyril Brulebois [kibi@debian.org]
  13. Stephen Gran [sgran@debian.org]
  14. Andreas Barth [aba@debian.org]
  15. Loïc Minier [lool@debian.org]
  16. Patrick Schoenfeld [schoenfeld@debian.org]
  17. Philipp Kern [pkern@debian.org]

Proposal F

Choice 6.
The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the resolution, post-ambles to the resolution, abstracts, fore-words, after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls, arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote mailing list archives for details.

Exclude source requirements for firmware (defined)

Firmware is data such as microcode or lookup tables that is loaded into hardware components in order to make the component function properly. It is not code that is run on the host CPU.

Unfortunately such firmware often is distributed as so-called blobs, with no source or further documentation that lets us learn how it works or interacts with the hardware in question. By excluding such firmware from Debian we exclude users that require such devices from installing our operating system, or make it unnecessarily hard for them.

  1. firmware in Debian does not have to come with source. While we do prefer firmware that comes with source and documentation we will not require it,

  2. we however do require all other freedoms that the DFSG mandate from components of our operating system, and

  3. such firmware can and should be part of our official installation media.

Minimum Discussion

As per the request from the Debian Project Leader, the voting and minimum discussion periods are one week long.

Quorum

With the current list of voting developers, we have: 

 Current Developer Count = 1018
 Q ( sqrt(#devel) / 2 ) = 15.9530561335438
 K min(5, Q )           = 5
 Quorum  (3 x Q )       = 47.8591684006314

Quorum

Data and Statistics

For this GR, as always statistics shall be gathered about ballots received and acknowledgements sent periodically during the voting period. Additionally, the list of voters would be made publicly available. Also, the tally sheet may also be viewed after to voting is done (Note that while the vote is in progress it is a dummy tally sheet). Until these are published, live stats are available.

Majority Requirement

Amendments A (choice 2), B (choice 3), C (choice 4), and E (choice 6) supersede foundation documents, temporarily or permanently, and thus need a 3:1 majority. The Proposal (choice 1) and Amendment D (choice 5) require a simple majority to pass.

Majority

Outcome

Graphical rendering of the results

In the graph above, any pink colored nodes imply that the option did not pass majority, the Blue is the winner. The Octagon is used for the options that did not beat the default.

In the following table, tally[row x][col y] represents the votes that option x received over option y. A more detailed explanation of the beat matrix may help in understanding the table. For understanding the Condorcet method, the Wikipedia entry is fairly informative.

The Beat Matrix
 Option
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Option 1   46 60 72 73 89 117
Option 2 281   160 160 171 177 224
Option 3 255 61   125 137 151 204
Option 4 253 121 146   160 166 194
Option 5 234 105 128 135   136 191
Option 6 220 118 134 125 134   180
Option 7 226 129 145 153 160 169  

Looking at row 2, column 1, Allow Lenny to release with proprietary firmware [3:1]
received 281 votes over Reaffirm the Social Contract

Looking at row 1, column 2, Reaffirm the Social Contract
received 46 votes over Allow Lenny to release with proprietary firmware [3:1].

Pair-wise defeats

The Schwartz Set contains

The winners

Debian uses the Condorcet method for voting. Simplistically, plain Condorcets method can be stated like so :
Consider all possible two-way races between candidates. The Condorcet winner, if there is one, is the one candidate who can beat each other candidate in a two-way race with that candidate. The problem is that in complex elections, there may well be a circular relationship in which A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. Most of the variations on Condorcet use various means of resolving the tie. See Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping for details. Debian's variation is spelled out in the constitution, specifically, A.6.

Manoj Srivastava