Hi, On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 12:01:29PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 12:48:55PM -0400, Jim Penny wrote: > > On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 11:38:12 -0500 > > Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 05:56:32PM +0200, Emile van Bergen wrote: > > > > > > > > I object to this ITP. Not very strongly, but I still object. > > > > > > > I think it's a wonderful idea to have a decss package in Debian. If > > > > Debian cannot distribute the decss that allows Debian users to view > > > > DVD movies (yet), then distributing this one is a good alternative, > > > > I'd say. > > > > You're clearly quite mad. Regardless of whether this script is > > > trivial to implement, it's not something anyone should be encouraged > > > to actually*use*. CSS is the *best* feature of the HTML4 standard. > > > Why would anyone in their right mind wish to strip nearly all the > > > logical structure markup out of a document? > > > Uhh, it is to tweak the international copyright cartel, and the RIAA in > > particular. They have written "cease and desist" letters to anyone who > > has a file names deCSS on their system. This is an attempt to make such > > a filename so common that these letters are pointless, and possibly > > evidence of illegal activity. > > If the intent is *only* as a political tool, I would agree that this > decss program achieves its aims fairly effectively; but it is in no way > a useful piece of *software*, which is what Emile seems to be arguing by > disagreeing that it's trivial to implement. The question then is > whether we want to include programs in Debian which are useful only as > something other than software. I'm not arguing that it isn't almost trivial, I'm arguing that it's non-trivial enough to put in a shell script (at least I would if I'd be performing the operation regularly). Whether it deserves a Debian package has little to do with that, of course. It's much more useful as a political tool if it is at least somewhat useful as a software tool. A file containing some output of /dev/random called decss would be less effective. I see packaging as a good protest that we cannot package the real decss, which would definitely be a candidate for a debian package, as it is required to watch DVDs using DFSG-free software. As soon as we can package the real thing, we should probably rename the HTML/CSS decss as decss-html and release the real decss using a new epoch. The principle is horrible, but in this case I think the confusion would be minimal. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies - Emile van Bergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 http://www.e-advies.nl
