The Debian Social Contract is a document which frames the moral agenda of the Debian project. The values outlined in the Social Contract provide the basic principles for the rules set forth in the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Those guidelines serve as the basis for the Open Source Definition.
Debian believes that the makers of a free software operating system should provide certain guarantees when a user entrusts them with control of a computer. These guarantees include:
- Ensuring that the operating system remains open and Free.
- Giving improvements back to the community which made the operating system possible.
- Not hiding problems with the software or organization.
- Staying focused on the users and the software that started the phenomena.
- Making it possible for the software to be used with non-free software.
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or contract:
“The protection of a ten-year-old girl from her father’s advances is a necessary condition of social order, but the protection of the father from temptation is a necessary condition of his continued social adjustment. The protections that are built up in the child against desire for the parent become the essential counterpart to the attitudes in the parent that protect the child.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.”
—Isadora Duncan (1878–1927)