Years ago, it was customary that some of us stated publicly the way we
think in time of Debian General Resolutions (GRs). And even if we
didn t, vote lists were open (except when voting for
people,
i.e. when electing a DPL), so if interested we could understand what
our different peers thought.
This is the first vote, though, where a Debian vote is protected under
voting secrecy. I think
it is sad we chose that path, as I liken a GR vote more with a voting
process within a
general assembly of a cooperative than with a
countrywide voting one; I feel that understanding who is behind each
posture helps us better understand the project as a whole.
But anyway, I m digressing Even though I remained quiet during much
of the discussion period (I was preparing and attending a conference),
I am very much interested in this vote I am the maintainer for the
Raspberry Pi firmware, and am a seconder for two of them. Many people
know me for being quite inflexible in my interpretation of what should
be considered Free Software, and I m proud of it. But still, I
believer it to be fundamental for Debian to be able to run on the
hardware most users have.
So My vote was as follows:
[6] Choice 1: Only one installer, including non-free firmware
[2] Choice 2: Recommend installer containing non-free firmware
[3] Choice 3: Allow presenting non-free installers alongside the free one
[7] Choice 4: Installer with non-free software is not part of Debian
[4] Choice 5: Change SC for non-free firmware in installer, one installer
[1] Choice 6: Change SC for non-free firmware in installer, keep both installers
[5] Choice 7: None Of The Above
For people reading this not into Debian s voting processes: Debian
uses the
cloneproof Schwatz sequential dropping Condorcet
method, which means we
don t only choose our favorite option (which could lead to suboptimal
strategic voting outcomes), but we rank all the options according to
our preferences.
To read this vote, we should first locate position of None of the
above , which for my ballot is #5. Let me reorder the ballot according
to my preferences:
[1] Choice 6: Change SC for non-free firmware in installer, keep both installers
[2] Choice 2: Recommend installer containing non-free firmware
[3] Choice 3: Allow presenting non-free installers alongside the free one
[4] Choice 5: Change SC for non-free firmware in installer, one installer
[5] Choice 7: None Of The Above
[6] Choice 1: Only one installer, including non-free firmware
[7] Choice 4: Installer with non-free software is not part of Debian
This is, I
don t agree either with Steve McIntyre s original
proposal,
Choice 1 (even though I
seconded it, this means, I think
it s very important to have this vote, and as a first proposal, it s
better than the
status quo maybe it s contradictory that I prefer
it to the
status quo, but ranked it below NotA. Well, more on that
when I present
Choice 5).
My
least favorite option is
Choice 4, presented by Simon
Josefsson, which represents the
status quo: I don t want Debian not
to have at all an installer that cannot be run on most modern hardware
with reasonably good user experience (i.e. network support or the
ability to boot at all!)
Slightly above my acceptability threshold, I ranked
Choice 5,
presented by Russ Allbery. Debian s voting and its constitution rub
each other in interesting ways, so the Project Secretary has to run
the votes as they are presented but he has interpreted
Choice 1
to be incompatible with the Social Contract (as there would no longer
be a DFSG-free installer available), and if it wins, it could lead him
to having to declare the vote invalid. I don t want that to happen,
and that s why I ranked
Choice 1 below
None of the above.
[update/note] Several people have asked me to back that the
Secretary said so. I can refer to four mails:
2022.08.29,
2022.08.30,
2022.09.02,
2022.09.04.
Other than that,
Choice 6 (proposed by Holger Levsen),
Choice 2
(proposed by me) and
Choice 3 (proposed by Bart Martens) are very
much similar; the main difference is that
Choice 6 includes a
modification to the Social Contract expressing that:
The Debian official media may include firmware that is otherwise not
part of the Debian system to enable use of Debian with hardware that
requires such firmware.
I believe choices
2 and
3 to be mostly the same, being
Choice 2
more verbose in explaining the reasoning than
Choice 3.
Oh! And there are always some more bits to the discussion For
example, given they hold modifications to the Social Contract, both
Choice 5 and
Choice 6 need a 3:1 supermajority to be valid.
So, lets wait until the beginning of October to get the results, and
to implement the changes they will (or not?) allow. If you are a
Debian Project Member, please vote!
here's my 
Finally, it happened! I became a Debian Developer!
I wish to thank everybody involved in this process: from those who helped me in my initial packaging efforts, to who actually created the account.
Many thanks to the pkg-perl team for accepting newbies and helping them: props to Damyan Ivanov, Gregor Herrmann, Gunnar Wolf!
Thanks to Debian-Med and Debian CLI: they always believed in me, and I had a great time in these teams. A special thanks goes to Andreas Tille, who advocated my NM candidature.
Thanks to my two AMs, Bart Martens and Bernd Zeimetz. Even if my NM was long, difficult and not so flawless, it all went good, at the end 
.
A special thanks to Enrico Zini: he was the first DD signing my GPG key, thus allowing me to have more "rights" (being a DM), and experience some more responsibility than I previously had. Thanks to his "Become a DD. NOW!" right after checking my ID in Palermo -- Enrico, it finally happened!
Thanks to Christoph Berg, Ron Lee, and Stephen Gran, which handled the final steps of the overall process.
And now, dapal is here to break the world. Be warned! 
. If you’re anywhere near Aquinas University, drop me a line.
On the Debian side, my updates for 
I’ve still yet to see 
I’ve seen some hope for ecb, thanks to Bart Martens, who was very helpful and put the updated URL for the latest ecb source package on the ITA.
As for the writing, I’m now doing some final school reports for the year-ender. Ooh, just a month more, and here comes summer!!! I just hope there’s something like a local Google Summer of Code…