On 2021/03/19 11:13, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > 1/ Why have you all given up on the idea to lead Debian?
This question still bothers me a bit. Firstly, I don't see my previous term or my upcoming term that way. I believe that considering the climate in recent years in Debian, and considering all the chaos in the rest of the world over the last year, the work I did on stabilization was the right way to spend my time and I don't regret that. I think if I do regret one thing (and this partially addresses the question posted in a mail[1] I might not have gotten previously due to a possible spam setting problem), it would be not communicating more properly. My plan was to set up a DPL blog and have more frequent updates than a monthly blog. Unfortunately, that didn't quite work out. I'll work on a strategy to fix that even before this term ends. I think that a combination of microblogging and summarizing them in larger posts for planet debian might work better. At the same time, I tend to be close to action where things are happening, I think many teams would be able to confirm that. Not everything in Debian happens in mailing lists. [1] https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/[email protected] But I digress, I think even as Debian we can be more ambitious in the way we lead. I'd like to talk about the Free Software Foundation first. They've been a disappointment to me for a long time. At one point I were a very active FSF member, I followed the mailing lists where RMS and other FSF organisers would post links to misinformation out there and I'd actively go comment and correct things along with other members, I was also one of the top referrers of their affiliate program. I was invested in the Free Software Foundation and I trusted them and I realised how critical their role was not only in the software world, but I'd go as far as to say for the advancement of our species since free software is so incredibly critical when it comes to leveling playing fields in business, human rights and more. Even though I admired what they stand for, I was dissapointed in how they do things. Explaining things like source code and software is already difficult to the average user, but their campaigns are often just weird and sends mixed signals. For example, the windows7sins campaign painted Windows 7 as this thing of pure evil that should be avoided at all costs, often using terminology to explain it that likely only people would understand that have been involved in software for a long time. Anyway, then last year they have another campaign to release Windows 7 as free software, and the messaging makes it seem like Windows 7 is this precious piece of software that deserves saving and that we should all rally together to spend time on energy on that campaign. At the same time, they seem to do very little for some of the biggest actual issues that could do with campaigning. In Debian, non-free firmware is a really big problem for us. It pushes us in the corner where we either have to release installation media that won't work outside of the box for a significant percentage of users, or we have to go down a potentially slippery slope and consider having something like a firmware repository that's enabled by default. And trust me, it really irks me that an official Debian Live image will never work on my very own laptop because it needs the firmware-amd-graphics package in order to initialize my graphics. The issue comes up often and really, I applaud the people who actually work towards some solutions to this rather than just complaining about it. At the same time, the FSF is really harsh towards Debian. On their page explaining why they don't endorse several distributions, they write more paragraphs about why Debian is bad than any other distribution on that list (and this is a list that includes Red Hat, SuSE and Ubuntu... yikes). To the average person unfamiliar with all these distributions, it gives the impression that Debian is by far the worst offender of software freedoms on the list, ironically, they've even admitted that it's probably by far the best for software freedom on that list, and yet they refuse to fix that page. I've asked them to do so many times, even once when 2 FSF staffers asked for feedback in an FSF session at DebConf. They are just not interested. I think the FSF could spend their time better. Back in 1998, the OSI did a pretty good job of lobbying at Netscape to release their browser suite as free software. We need that right now for firmware more than we needed it for anything else than a browser since 1998. The FSF seems to be spending zero energy on this. If I could decide for campaigns for the FSF, I'd put together materials and go directly to chip makers and spend time discussing benefits of free firmware to them and how the benefits of releasing free software very likely far outweighs the benefits of keeping it closed. Also, once you have a few chips that are free, you can lobby laptop/computer manufacturers to start using these free chips in their machines, making it easier to apply more pressure on those that don't. Also, some people in our community are convinced that it's possible that you can reverse engineer some firmware blobs legally for as little as $100k. To me that sounds like a great deal and almost too good to be true, but if I were in a decision position at the FSF, I would definitely give a shot at this, every piece of hardware that gets a piece of free firmware to go with it will make a totally free GNU/Linux system possible for another non-trivial percentage of users out there. It's important work. Arguably one of the most important missions that could be taken on in the free software world right now. In the past, some people have asked me if I'm more of a "free software" or "open source" kind of person. And I guess in that same veign you could ask me if I more closely relate my views to the FSF or the OSI, but over the years they've both proven to be much less relevant to me in terms of spreading free software and equally importantly, the *idea* of free software as much as Debian has. Debian has been my personal free software movement above the FSF and OSI for nearly a decade now, and in answering Raphaëls question above I think we can do more as Debian to lead and to be a free software movement for people who care as deeply for our cause as we do. Our connections into the corporate world are growing. Increasingly we have the power to influence some decisions and get a foot in the door to meet with decision makers. We should use that and use our powers for good. As things are right now already I'd be willing to approve funds for working on reverse engineering firmware for hardware that we support. I do think it needs some project consensus first and I would check for objections first. As said by many people in many threads, it would be really useful to be able to poll the project on many issues. But I digress, if we really want to be bold and show leadership, not only from the DPL but form the project, we should go a step further and make the Debian project not only a project to release and support a free software operating system, but also to be a proper leader in the free software movement and work on the issues in our eco-system that apparently no one else cares about and it should be part of our core identity. This itch has always been there for me, and I imagine other Debianites as well. But to move something like this forward in the project needs the support of our members instead of just finding every possible flaw at every opportunity. So I can't help wondering, does that kind of support exist within our community? Is it possible for us to get together to make large, important changes? -Jonathan
