On 16454 March 1977, Joerg Jaspert wrote:

While that war is idiotic and entirely stupid - what is the gain for
Debian issuing such a statement? What is the goal here?

Oh, and why now, not for all of those other wars and the misery coming
out of them, all over the world, in the last years?

--
bye, Joerg

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On 16454 March 1977, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

While that war is idiotic and entirely stupid - what is the gain for
Debian issuing such a statement? What is the goal here?

And does that mean we should from now on do one on every larger thing
going on?

How does that fit with what Debian actually is?

--
bye, Joerg

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Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

--
debian developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev
ubuntu core developer i speak de, en

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Quoting Julian Andres Klode (2022-03-31 12:31:18)

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

No we don't - we care about our users, and our users include those who
do evil.


- Jonas

--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

[x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private --==============q53235614332547131=MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Description: signature
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"; charset="us-ascii"

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:31:18PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

I do not believe that Debian starting issuing such statements for
political issues of the day would be a good idea.

Half the people on this planet are living in countries that did not
approve the "Aggression against Ukraine" UN resolution, including
many Debian contributors.

Does the Debian project consider the territorial integrity of a country
more important than the opinion of the majority of the people living in
a part of the country?
If the Debian project declares it considers Donbas and Crimea to be
part of Ukraine, will the Debian project also declare that it considers
Taiwan to be part of China?

Does the Debian project support or oppose the independence of Catalonia?

Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations, and many countries
(including Ukraine) do consider Kosovo to be a part of Serbia.
What is the position of the Debian Project on the political status
of Debconf host Kosovo?

Different from Kosovo and Taiwan, Palestine at least has observer status
at the United Nations, and Palestine is recognized by more United
Nations member countries than Kosovo and Taiwan combined.
What is the position of the Debian project on the status of Palestine?

Does the Debian project support sanctions against Russia?
Does the Debian project support the BDS movement?

Does the Debian project strongly condemn the Saudi intervention in Yemen?
Are people who work for companies (co-)owned by the government of
Saudi Arabia welcome in Debian?

How should the Debian project treat people who participated in the
invasion of the sovereign nation Iraq by the United States?

There would be plenty of potential GRs for such issues of the day.


Different Debian contributors do have different personal opinions on
political topics like the ones above.

Our Diversity Statement states that the Debian Project welcomes and
encourages participation by everyone.

Debian as a project expressing political opinions destroys diversity,
technical collaboration in an international project works best when the
project stays as far as possible away from taking sides in political
topics of any kind.


cu
Adrian

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 04:17:42PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:31:18PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

I do not believe that Debian starting issuing such statements for
political issues of the day would be a good idea.

I think this is a good position, especially in this case.

We have Debian developers and users in Ukraine and Russia: hostilities continue.
If the project were to endorse this, you might put people in a dangerous situation - in an area subject to Russian control, anybody involved with Debian, even peripherally, would be breaking Russian law if the above
passed and might be subject to 15 years imprisonment.
[A factual statement with no further judgment].

If this is a precedent, would you feel as happy to make a value call on
the rights of the Karens / Rohinggya in Myanmar? The Hmong across SE Asian borders? Strong feelings about Taiwanese status, flag, designation have
already caused issues in Debian and other Linux distributions.

Individual manifestations of support, actions, speaking up [subject to
whatever your local laws say about freedom of speech, as ever] - yes
A trans national project such as Debian may find this especially difficult.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

Half the people on this planet are living in countries that did not
approve the "Aggression against Ukraine" UN resolution, including
many Debian contributors.

Does the Debian project consider the territorial integrity of a country
more important than the opinion of the majority of the people living in
a part of the country?
If the Debian project declares it considers Donbas and Crimea to be
part of Ukraine, will the Debian project also declare that it considers Taiwan to be part of China?

Does the Debian project support or oppose the independence of Catalonia?

Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations, and many countries
(including Ukraine) do consider Kosovo to be a part of Serbia.
What is the position of the Debian Project on the political status
of Debconf host Kosovo?

Different from Kosovo and Taiwan, Palestine at least has observer status
at the United Nations, and Palestine is recognized by more United
Nations member countries than Kosovo and Taiwan combined.
What is the position of the Debian project on the status of Palestine?

Does the Debian project support sanctions against Russia?
Does the Debian project support the BDS movement?

Does the Debian project strongly condemn the Saudi intervention in Yemen?
Are people who work for companies (co-)owned by the government of
Saudi Arabia welcome in Debian?

How should the Debian project treat people who participated in the
invasion of the sovereign nation Iraq by the United States?

There would be plenty of potential GRs for such issues of the day.

Different Debian contributors do have different personal opinions on political topics like the ones above.

Our Diversity Statement states that the Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.

Debian as a project expressing political opinions destroys diversity, technical collaboration in an international project works best when the project stays as far as possible away from taking sides in political
topics of any kind.

cu
Adrian

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 03:46:46PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 04:17:42PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:31:18PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

I do not believe that Debian starting issuing such statements for
political issues of the day would be a good idea.

I think this is a good position, especially in this case.

We have Debian developers and users in Ukraine and Russia: hostilities continue.
If the project were to endorse this, you might put people in a dangerous situation - in an area subject to Russian control, anybody involved with Debian, even peripherally, would be breaking Russian law if the above
passed and might be subject to 15 years imprisonment.
[A factual statement with no further judgment].

Can you provide a source? Regardless though, I can imagine a crumbling
regime to do basically anything, and this is certainly a valid point,
and also a problem for any of our Russian DDs if they were to face priso
for association with an enemy organisation or whatever.

If this is a precedent, would you feel as happy to make a value call on
the rights of the Karens / Rohinggya in Myanmar? The Hmong across SE Asian borders? Strong feelings about Taiwanese status, flag, designation have already caused issues in Debian and other Linux distributions.

At least for Taiwan and Kosovo, I think that by holding DebConfs in
those places and engaging with their self-determined governments we
have de-facto accepted them as self-determined sovereign nations.

--
debian developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev
ubuntu core developer i speak de, en

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Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> writes:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

I think this is too far afield of the purpose and subject matter expertise
of Debian for it to be a good idea for us to issue a statement on it.

I understand the desire, and I'm not saying I disagree with the statement
in any way. But Debian is an organization focused on a specific purpose,
and I think there should be some direct relationship between actions we
take and that purpose. The previous GR about RMS was highly controversial
for a number of reasons including that one (indeed, the project voted to
not make a statement largely for that reason), and there I think the
connection was far more direct: we work directly with the FSF, we are part
of the free software community and its leadership is directly relevant to
our work, and so forth.

Here, while I suspect this statement is less controversial among project members, the connection is far more remote. There really isn't anything meaningful that Debian could do to act on such a statement. It's just a statement about an ongoing world event that's only related to the work of
the project insofar as it's a world event.

I think it's not a good idea to go down this path. The world is sadly
rife with things that one could take an position on, of varying degrees of controversy, and I'd rather not get into a world where we're voting on,
say, climate change, universal health care, coups in various countries, or
so forth, when we have no special expertise and no special involvement.

If there's anything concrete that the Debian Project can do within the
scope of our work to assist members of the project who are directly
affected by the invasion, that would be another matter, but I also
strongly suspect that wouldn't require a GR.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 06:57:06PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

...
At least for Taiwan and Kosovo, I think that by holding DebConfs in
those places and engaging with their self-determined governments we
have de-facto accepted them as self-determined sovereign nations.

I think that you are 100% wrong on that.

The handful people who are choosing Debconf locations cannot make
political statements on behalf of the whole project.

If a Debconf location is also considered a political statement as you
imply then we have to choose Debconf locations by means of GR, starting
with a GR right now whether Debian wants to consider Kosovo a
self-determined sovereign nation by holding Debconf 2022 there.

If Debian would ever consider Taiwan a self-determined sovereign nation,
we would de facto exclude people in China from contributing to Debian.

Is holding a Debconf in Israel a political statement by Debian that
people in Palestine should not have to right to vote in any country?

cu
Adrian

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Julian Andres Klode dijo [Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 06:57:06PM +0200]:

I think this is a good position, especially in this case.

We have Debian developers and users in Ukraine and Russia: hostilities continue.
If the project were to endorse this, you might put people in a dangerous situation - in an area subject to Russian control, anybody involved with Debian, even peripherally, would be breaking Russian law if the above passed and might be subject to 15 years imprisonment.
[A factual statement with no further judgment].

Can you provide a source? Regardless though, I can imagine a crumbling
regime to do basically anything, and this is certainly a valid point,
and also a problem for any of our Russian DDs if they were to face priso
for association with an enemy organisation or whatever.

Regardless of whether Andrew's concerns are to be feared in the
current situation, lets apply them in general. If our project aligns
to either side in a geopolitical issue, whatever that issue might be,
it could be expected that DDs (or, more widely, Debian Contributors)
in the affected regions could face problems due to their
identification with our project. We can avoid Russian and Ukranian,
Chinese and Taiwanes, Serbian and Kosovan, Israeli and Palestinian
Debian people many issues by refraining from issuing statements
outside our main sphere of interest.

If this is a precedent, would you feel as happy to make a value call on
the rights of the Karens / Rohinggya in Myanmar? The Hmong across SE Asian borders? Strong feelings about Taiwanese status, flag, designation have already caused issues in Debian and other Linux distributions.

At least for Taiwan and Kosovo, I think that by holding DebConfs in
those places and engaging with their self-determined governments we
have de-facto accepted them as self-determined sovereign nations.

Please don't read that much into it. A lot of discussion about this
precise topic was generated when we chose Israel for DebConf20 (which
was, as you might be aware, converted to an online conference due to a
strange bug that's not reported in our BTS, although it might have
been observed to have impacted Debian development during the past two
years ;-) ).

DebConf chooses the place where we will host our conference not based
on the politics, not because of the countries -- but based on the work
and the commitment shown by the organizing teams. The Israeli proposal
was mainly put together by Tzafrir, Lior and Talat, coalescing
commitment of several other people. The Kosovo bid was mostly pushed
by Enkelena, joining forces with FLOSSK. For Taiwan, we had a somewhat
larger team. We did _NOT_ choose any of those countries (nor any other
DebConf editions due to their governments.

We _have_ been beneficary from resources directly granted by
governments. We _do_ consider some geopolitical issues when choosing a
DebConf venue, such as the ability to obtain visas or the risk it
would pose to our attendees (i.e. countries where homosexuality is
forbidden). But we do not "choose sides" nor endorse any government or
such entity.

- Gunnar Wolf
DebConf Committee member

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Hi,

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 3:33 AM Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> wrote:

nontechnical statements.

"Life is like a flute. It may have many holes and emptiness but if you
work on it carefully, it can play magical melodies."

First comment here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5qhNRmMilI

Kind regards,
Felix Lechner

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Hi,

On Thu, 31 Mar 2022 12:31:18 +0200
Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

I disagree with it. I want to define the Debian Project as people who
do Free and Open Source Software development and its distribution to
give some more "possibilities" to the world, not the political organization.


And I also agree with the emotion that in the behind of this GR. However,
that's the different thing.

--
Hideki Yamane <henrich@iijmio-mail.jp>

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Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org> writes:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 03:46:46PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 04:17:42PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:31:18PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

I do not believe that Debian starting issuing such statements for
political issues of the day would be a good idea.

I think this is a good position, especially in this case.

We have Debian developers and users in Ukraine and Russia: hostilities continue.
If the project were to endorse this, you might put people in a dangerous
situation - in an area subject to Russian control, anybody involved with
Debian, even peripherally, would be breaking Russian law if the above
passed and might be subject to 15 years imprisonment.
[A factual statement with no further judgment].

Can you provide a source?

If you've not noticed that the whole of Russia's independent media has
given up publishing over the last month, largely because of this new law
that imposes maximum penalties of 15 years in prison for spreading
"false" news, such as referring to what the Kremlin calls a "Special
Military Operation" as a "war" or "invasion", then you've really not
been paying attention ... in which case, you don't know enough about it
to propose a GR (even if such a thing was a good idea, which it isn't).

Given that Putin's not going to suddenly come to his senses upon hearing
that Debian doesn't like his war, the only effect such a GR is likely to
have would be to sow division within the project where none needs to
exist.

It also has the potential to give the false impression that Debian
supports Putin if enough people are against such statements (regardless
of their content), and vote NotA first to show that.

BTW I note that you are missing the 'e' from Ukraine in your GR, among
other typos, which reinforces the impression that you didn't really
devote much concentration to this GR.

Cheers, Phil.
--
|)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:31:18PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

In the previous GR I offered an amendment:

2) General resolutions that probe developpers opinions about
non-technical issues outside the social contract are discouraged.

I also wrote
""
For the record, I am not actually in favor of holding secret votes, even thought I fully agree with the developpers who felt that voting might
open them to abuse, because the issues raised by GR 2021_002 are much
more serious than the secret vote issue, viz, that the Debian project is
not the collection of opinions of its members since the members only
agreed to fulfill the social contract when acting on behalf of Debian
and not in general, and that their opinions outside of this is a private
matter that must not be probbed, and that even the agregate result of
the vote is already leaking information that the Debian project has no
purpose to gather and publish.
""

It seems it is necessarry to repeat it...

In this instance, Debian taking a public position on this could lead
to harm toward some Debian members, independently of their vote and
is unlikely to achieve much.

Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.

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On Fri, Apr 01, 2022 at 07:22:32PM +0000, Bill Allombert wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:31:18PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

In the previous GR I offered an amendment:

2) General resolutions that probe developpers opinions about
non-technical issues outside the social contract are discouraged.

I also wrote
""
For the record, I am not actually in favor of holding secret votes, even thought I fully agree with the developpers who felt that voting might
open them to abuse, because the issues raised by GR 2021_002 are much
more serious than the secret vote issue, viz, that the Debian project is
not the collection of opinions of its members since the members only
agreed to fulfill the social contract when acting on behalf of Debian
and not in general, and that their opinions outside of this is a private matter that must not be probbed, and that even the agregate result of
the vote is already leaking information that the Debian project has no purpose to gather and publish.
""

It seems it is necessarry to repeat it...

In this instance, Debian taking a public position on this could lead
to harm toward some Debian members, independently of their vote and
is unlikely to achieve much.

I'm glad to see that secret votes as we have now didn't seem to encourage 'opinions about non-technical issues outside the social contract'. So far, such GR proposal reached zero support, possibly an indication that we didn't need to keep publishing individual votes in order to collectively keep common sense. Thus,
although I agree with your concerns, I keep believing that a correlation between vote secrecy and arbitrary GRs is currently absent in our project.

Bests,

--
Tiago

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On Fri, Apr 01, 2022 at 04:17:49PM -0400, Tiago Bortoletto Vaz wrote:

I'm glad to see that secret votes as we have now didn't seem to encourage 'opinions about non-technical issues outside the social contract'. So far, such
GR proposal reached zero support,

Debatable, as the archive show.

possibly an indication that we didn't need to
keep publishing individual votes in order to collectively keep common sense. Thus,
although I agree with your concerns, I keep believing that a correlation between vote secrecy and arbitrary GRs is currently absent in our project.

Sorry, I did not mean to imply correlation in this way.

However the 2021_002 GR was a trigger for the secret vote GR proposal,
and we should be better addressing the root cause than the effect.

In any case, I am glad you agree with my concerns.

Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.

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On Tue, Apr 05, 2022 at 01:36:02PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:

I think this thread has largely petered out, with many people having laid
out the reasons why Debian taking a public position on this is not necessarily a good idea.

But I don't think it should go unadddressed that it's quite a bizarre twist to go from "our priorities are our users and Free Software" to "we care
about evil users".

[...]

Thank you, Steve, for writing what you wrote. I felt the same but couldn't
put it into words this well and I also didn't want to contribute to this thread. But now it's good that you expressed this so well.


--
cheers,
Holger

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C
⠈⠳⣄

The mark of a civilized man is the ability to look at a column of numbers and weep. (Bertrand Russell)

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 02:39:31PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

Quoting Julian Andres Klode (2022-03-31 12:31:18)

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

No we don't - we care about our users, and our users include those who
do evil.

I think this thread has largely petered out, with many people having laid
out the reasons why Debian taking a public position on this is not
necessarily a good idea.

But I don't think it should go unadddressed that it's quite a bizarre twist
to go from "our priorities are our users and Free Software" to "we care
about evil users".

"Our priorities are our users and Free Software" means that, in our decision making and our governance we should be oriented FIRST towards users and do
what is good for the people who are using our software; and that our SECOND priority, only when not in conflict in the first, is to promote Free
Software.

That is far different from "people who are doing evil are using Debian, and therefore we should support them".

Now, there are quite a lot of people who do evil and use Debian, most of
which happens well outside the context of a geopolitical conflict. It is unrealistic to stop evil people from using Debian (or to stop Debian users
from doing evil). But that doesn't mean people doing evil should somehow
get a free pass from us because they are Debian users.

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer https://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org

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On 2022-04-05 17:02, Holger Levsen wrote:

On Tue, Apr 05, 2022 at 01:36:02PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:

I think this thread has largely petered out, with many people having laid
out the reasons why Debian taking a public position on this is not
necessarily a good idea.

But I don't think it should go unadddressed that it's quite a bizarre twist >> to go from "our priorities are our users and Free Software" to "we care
about evil users".

[...]

Thank you, Steve, for writing what you wrote. I felt the same but couldn't put it into words this well and I also didn't want to contribute to this thread. But now it's good that you expressed this so well.

I too smashed my brain trying to organize those words. Now I was trying
to
write a thanks to Steve and then Holger just wrote the words I had in
mind.

Thanks to you both then :-)

Bests,


--
tiago

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Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> writes:

Quoting Steve Langasek (2022-04-05 22:36:02)

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 02:39:31PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

No we don't - we care about our users, and our users include those
who do evil.

I think this thread has largely petered out, with many people having
laid out the reasons why Debian taking a public position on this is not
necessarily a good idea.

But I don't think it should go unadddressed that it's quite a bizarre
twist to go from "our priorities are our users and Free Software" to
"we care about evil users".

Please note the word "include" in my sentence above.

Point is we do *not* care about our users doing evil.

I think there's an unfortunate confusion here between "care," which is a
mental state or a moral position, and some form of action.

I do, in fact, care about our users doing evil, so I'm apparently not part
of your "we." However, in most cases I don't think Debian should *do*
anything about our users doing evil, for a whole bunch of reasons ranging
from the tradeoffs inherent in free software principles to the law of unintended consequences. There are unfortunately many instances where something bad is happening in the world but a specific person or
organization is not in a position to do anything effective about the bad
thing without causing more problems.

I suspect that you (Jonas) are largely arguing for the same thing, and
much of the disagreement is just over terminology.

Debian rejects software licensed with the following clause:

"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil"

This is an excellent example of the tradeoffs of free software principles.
The problem with such a license, at least from my perspective (which, from previous discussions on this exact topic, appears to be common) is not the general idea that we would prefer people not do evil things with software.
It's the practical specifics, which include such things as the murkiness
of "evil" (including different and incompatible effective definitions for
every piece of software with such a license), the problems with enforcing
such a license in a legal system that exists in the real world, and the
lack of clarity and thus legal uncertainty for our users who may be doing something that the author of the software may consider "evil" but that
many other people in the world would not.

In other words, I don't think we rejected that license because we don't
care whether our users do evil. I think we rejected that license because
the harm is greater than the benefits.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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Quoting Steve Langasek (2022-04-05 22:36:02)

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 02:39:31PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

Quoting Julian Andres Klode (2022-03-31 12:31:18)

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are
the body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an issue of
the day as given as an example, the recent invasion of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

No we don't - we care about our users, and our users include those
who do evil.

I think this thread has largely petered out, with many people having
laid out the reasons why Debian taking a public position on this is
not necessarily a good idea.

But I don't think it should go unadddressed that it's quite a bizarre
twist to go from "our priorities are our users and Free Software" to
"we care about evil users".

Please note the word "include" in my sentence above.

Point is we do *not* care about our users doing evil.

Which is same as we care *equally* about users doing good and users
doing bad: It is not for us to judge our users' deeds.

Debian rejects software licensed with the following clause:

"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil"

That is far different from "people who are doing evil are using
Debian, and therefore we should support them".

Why do you write "therefore"?

I talk about supporting our users _regardless_ of doing good or evil.


[ further distortion snipped ]

Please don't twist my words!


- Jonas

--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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On Tue, 5 Apr 2022 13:36:02 -0700
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:

It is
unrealistic to stop evil people from using Debian (or to stop Debian users from doing evil). But that doesn't mean people doing evil should somehow
get a free pass from us because they are Debian users.

Exactly.

--
Hideki Yamane <henrich@iijmio-mail.jp>

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Quoting Russ Allbery (2022-04-06 01:44:43)

Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> writes:

Quoting Steve Langasek (2022-04-05 22:36:02)

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 02:39:31PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

No we don't - we care about our users, and our users include those
who do evil.

I think this thread has largely petered out, with many people
having laid out the reasons why Debian taking a public position on
this is not necessarily a good idea.

But I don't think it should go unadddressed that it's quite a
bizarre twist to go from "our priorities are our users and Free
Software" to "we care about evil users".

Please note the word "include" in my sentence above.

Point is we do *not* care about our users doing evil.

I think there's an unfortunate confusion here between "care," which is
a mental state or a moral position, and some form of action.

Ah. I think you are right - and I can see now how my choice of words
upset others.

I do, in fact, care about our users doing evil, so I'm apparently not
part of your "we." However, in most cases I don't think Debian should
*do* anything about our users doing evil, for a whole bunch of reasons ranging from the tradeoffs inherent in free software principles to the
law of unintended consequences. There are unfortunately many
instances where something bad is happening in the world but a specific person or organization is not in a position to do anything effective
about the bad thing without causing more problems.

I suspect that you (Jonas) are largely arguing for the same thing, and
much of the disagreement is just over terminology.

I think I do agree, yes.

Debian rejects software licensed with the following clause:

"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil"

This is an excellent example of the tradeoffs of free software principles. The problem with such a license, at least from my perspective (which, from previous discussions on this exact topic, appears to be common) is not the general idea that we would prefer people not do evil things with software. It's the practical specifics, which include such things as the murkiness
of "evil" (including different and incompatible effective definitions for every piece of software with such a license), the problems with enforcing such a license in a legal system that exists in the real world, and the
lack of clarity and thus legal uncertainty for our users who may be doing something that the author of the software may consider "evil" but that
many other people in the world would not.

In other words, I don't think we rejected that license because we don't
care whether our users do evil. I think we rejected that license because
the harm is greater than the benefits.

Right.

I do not want anyone to do evil - be that our users or anyone else.

It is just not so simple to define or agree on what is evil, so we
provide Free Software for everyone - including evil war makers, and evil capitalists, and evil squirrel tamers, and evil fuel burners, etc.


- Jonas

--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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Steve Langasek wrote:

"Our priorities are our users and Free Software" means that, in our decision

making and our governance we should be oriented FIRST towards users and do
what is good for the people who are using our software; and that our SECOND priority, only when not in conflict in the first, is to promote Free
Software.

I agree with your message generally, and this might be only a minor
point -- but as I read that sentence, it doesn't say that our users
come FIRST and free software comes SECOND. To me, it says that we have
two priorities, with no particular ranking specified between them. The
order in which they are listed doesn't necessarily imply a ranking and
I don't think that was intended.

Of course software is only useful as long as it has users, so it may
be argued that users are "more important". But what you say seems to
go quite further than that. If users' needs have higher priority and
free software counts "only when not in conflict", then why isn't
Debian shipping non-free drivers?

Gerardo

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On 3/31/22 12:31, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

If you remember the GR about RMS [1], the outcome was "Debian will not
issue a public statement on this issue". Even if you find seconds to
propose this GR (which hopefully wont happen), it's very likely that a
majority of DDs will not want to make such a statement and vote against
your above text.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)

[1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:31:18PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:

Under 4.1.5 of the Constitution, the developers by way of GR are the
body who has the power to issue nontechnical statements.

This is a proposal for Debian to issue a statement on an
issue of the day as given as an example, the recent invasion
of Ukraine.

==== Text of GR ====

The Debian project issues the following statement:

The Debian project strongly condemns the invasion of Ukraine by
Russia. The Debian projects affirms that Ukrain is a souvereign
nation which includes the Donbas regions of Luhansk, as well as
Crimea, which has already been illegaly annexed by Russia.

Thanks everyone for the calm comments.

I think over the past week we have learned that we are not (yet) at
a point where the project would issue such a statement, therefore
I'm not going to drag this out further and am going to close this
topic by withdrawing my proposal.

Regarding Philip's comments about typos: I'm sorry, it's hard
to notice without a spell checker. I now enabled spell checking
in vim. In the same note, I want to apologize for the "the" in
the subject, it's my understanding we should refer to "Ukraine"
and not "the Ukraine", and the text did so, but I missed fixing
this in the subject.

Regarding the Russian law: It's a scare-mongering tactic, don't
give in to it. There is no rule of law in Russia anyway, it's just
a scam.

--
debian developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev
ubuntu core developer i speak de, en

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* Ori

Quoting Ansgar (2022-04-08 12:46:59)

On Fri, 2022-04-08 at 10:44 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 08:21:39PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:

If a Debconf location is also considered a political statement as
you imply then we have to choose Debconf locations by means of GR, starting with a GR right now whether Debian wants to consider
Kosovo a self-determined sovereign nation by holding Debconf 2022
there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Debconf is not formally a part of
Debian, and so cannot be bound by the outcome of a GR anyway.

Hmm, debconf.org says "Copyright Software in the Public Interest,
Inc", but there is no imprint or anything. DebConf as such is not
listed as a separate project on https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/; of
course it could still be part of systemd or another project.

DebConf is also not listed on
https://www.debian.org/trademark#licenses, but uses Debian trademarks.

So it pretty much looks like DebConf is part of Debian.

Sorry, I don't follow. What you quoted above seems to indicate to me
that Debconf _uses_ Debian, not that it is legally a part of Debian.


- Jonas

--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 04:17:42PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:

Half the people on this planet are living in countries that did not
approve the "Aggression against Ukraine" UN resolution, including
many Debian contributors.

The proposed GR text makes no reference to that UN resolution, so I
don't know why you bring it up.

Does the Debian project consider the territorial integrity of a country
more important than the opinion of the majority of the people living in
a part of the country?
If the Debian project declares it considers Donbas and Crimea to be
part of Ukraine

You have stopped short of saying "the majority of the people in Donbas
and Crimea do not consider themselves to be part of Ukraine" but if
that's what you are intending to assert then you're going to have to
show some hard evidence.

--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ jmtd@debian.org
🔗 https://jmtd.net

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On Fri, 2022-04-08 at 10:44 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 08:21:39PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:

If a Debconf location is also considered a political statement as
you
imply then we have to choose Debconf locations by means of GR,
starting
with a GR right now whether Debian wants to consider Kosovo a self-determined sovereign nation by holding Debconf 2022 there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Debconf is not formally a part of
Debian, and so cannot be bound by the outcome of a GR anyway.

Hmm, debconf.org says "Copyright Software in the Public Interest, Inc",
but there is no imprint or anything. DebConf as such is not listed as a separate project on https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/; of course it
could still be part of systemd or another project.

DebConf is also not listed on
https://www.debian.org/trademark#licenses, but uses Debian trademarks.

So it pretty much looks like DebConf is part of Debian.

Ansgar

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Hi Jonathan

On 2022/04/08 11:44, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Debconf is not formally a part of Debian,
and so cannot be bound by the outcome of a GR anyway.

Due to how DebConf started and how it evolved, and the pace that they
had to move on to get things done, they were initially a somewhat
separate (but close) organization to Debian.

Over the last decade that has changed a lot, and DebConf is now as much
part of the Debian project as any other Debian sub-project. We now
mostly use the same Debian TOs (unless there's a good reason to add a
temporary one for a conf), the DebConf committee is delegated within the project and there's no external setup of DebConf that exists anymore whatsoever.

I guess you could nitpick on what "formally a part of Debian" means, I
mean, we don't have formal agreements with most teams within Debian, but
as far as DebConf is concerned, I wouldn't say it's any more or less a
part of Debian than any other Debian sub-project.

-Jonathan

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Jonas Smedegaard dijo [Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 12:52:31PM +0200]:

Hmm, debconf.org says "Copyright Software in the Public Interest,
Inc", but there is no imprint or anything. DebConf as such is not
listed as a separate project on https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/; of course it could still be part of systemd or another project.

DebConf is also not listed on
https://www.debian.org/trademark#licenses, but uses Debian trademarks.

So it pretty much looks like DebConf is part of Debian.

Sorry, I don't follow. What you quoted above seems to indicate to me
that Debconf _uses_ Debian, not that it is legally a part of Debian.

Debian does not exist, legally :-)

DebConf is a project done largely by people in Debian, for Debian.

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On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 01:35:14PM -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:

Debian does not exist, legally :-)

and that's a feature, not a bug.

the CCC e.V. association OTOH was formed as a legal entity to protect individuals.

it's possible to go both ways to achieve some of the same goals, but the current structures have worked for Debian for almost three decades.


--
cheers,
Holger

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C
⠈⠳⣄

Imagine god created trillions of galaxies but freaks out because some dude kisses another.

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On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 10:19:27PM +0000, Holger Levsen wrote:

On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 01:35:14PM -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:

Debian does not exist, legally :-)

I'm repeating others, but I think it's important to repeat:

This may not be true. At least in the US, existence is a matter of
fact. Debian has members, bylaws, elections, common traditions, and
we're recognized by the free software and broader tech communities. All
of this would be brought as evidence that Debian exists.

Debian isn't *incorporated* - but that's not the only way to exist.

and that's a feature, not a bug.

I don't think so. At least in the US, it probably leaves all members
wholly and severally liable for Debian. So if there's a mixup and
someone doesn't pay a US-based company, they could attempt to recover
from any US-based member personally.

Unlikely - but I don't understand how that's a feature.

the CCC e.V. association OTOH was formed as a legal entity to protect individuals.

This seems prudent.

It'd also provide some options for settling agreements with service
providers for e.g. cloud accounts. We get along managing it via TOs,
but it's a perpetual source of confusion and delay.

Ross

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On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 01:09:13PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:

Over the last decade that has changed a lot, and DebConf is now as
much part of the Debian project as any other Debian sub-project. We
now mostly use the same Debian TOs (unless there's a good reason to
add a temporary one for a conf), the DebConf committee is delegated
within the project and there's no external setup of DebConf that
exists anymore whatsoever.

I guess you could nitpick on what "formally a part of Debian" means, I
mean, we don't have formal agreements with most teams within Debian,
but as far as DebConf is concerned, I wouldn't say it's any more or
less a part of Debian than any other Debian sub-project.

That's great news!

--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ jmtd@debian.org
🔗 https://jmtd.net

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Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> writes:

On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 01:35:14PM -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:

Debian does not exist, legally :-)

and that's a feature, not a bug.

Could you elaborate on this? We've heard arguments for why it might be a
bug – and we can have a discussion about whether that's true or not (I personally think that it is) – but in what way is it a feature?


Best,
Gard


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Regarding the Russian law: It's a scare-mongering tactic, don't
give in to it. There is no rule of law in Russia anyway, it's just
a scam.

I have a feeling that it's somewhat hypocritical to ask Russians to go
in the streets and protest their government risking their lives while
sitting in the comfort of your home in Germany, warmed up with russian
gas and coal.

Condemning an invasion is one thing, but asking others to risk their
lives for the sake of your principles is a very different thing.


--
Salvo Tomaselli

"Io non mi sento obbligato a credere che lo stesso Dio che ci ha dotato di senso, ragione ed intelletto intendesse che noi ne facessimo a meno."
-- Galileo Galilei

http://ltworf.github.io/ltworf/

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On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 10:24:55AM +0200, Gard Spreemann wrote:

On Fri, Apr 08, 2022 at 01:35:14PM -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:

Debian does not exist, legally :-)

and that's a feature, not a bug.

Could you elaborate on this? We've heard arguments for why it might be a
bug – and we can have a discussion about whether that's true or not (I personally think that it is) – but in what way is it a feature?

This is the point where it's worth getting legal advice. Roughly
speaking, the "feature" is that it reduces the overhead,
significantly. Being incorprated is not cheap, and it *may* increase
the risk profile since it may be easier (from a PR perspective, from
the ability to identify who to sue, from the ability for opposing
lawyers to understand how to sue an corporation vs. an unincorporated association, etc.)

Until 1970, the New York Stock Exchange was the oldest unincorporated association, so there have been some very old, well understood
organizations that have operated without being a corporation. Some
more not-legal-advice can be found here[1].

[1] https://charitylawyerblog.com/2021/11/22/unincorporated-nonprofit-association/

Until the Internet Society was formed, the Internet Engineering Task
Force as another example of an unincorporated association. The tricky
bit is that simply forming a corporation isn't going to be enough to
form a liability shield, since you now need to distinguish between
work that is being done by an individual (and hence personal liability
might attach to their activities), and work being done on behalf of
the corporate entity. And that may mean, for example, that there
needs to be more bureaucracy, and if that organization decides that
they want to get directors and officers legal insurance, to protect
board members and directories from personal liability of work done on
behalf of the corporation, the corporation may need to promulgate more
rules of what and isn't allowed. (Or else, it might not be possible to
get D&O insurance.)

Bottom line --- if we want to go there, we definitely need to seek
expert legal advice.

- Ted

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