Raphael Hertzog writes ("Re: Minified javascript files"):
> I agree with you that it's useless work. But the ftpmasters believe that
> Debian is made of source and binary packages and that the content of the
> source package should respect DFSG #2 “The program must include source
> code[...]”.
>
> Maybe we should fix DFSG #2 to say “The program must include source code
> for all the files that gets installed in the Debian binary packages [...]“.
I don't think this should be fixed by changing the DFSG. The DFSG is
correct - sourceless minified js files, GFDL docs with invariant
sections, gimp-generated pixmaps without the original gimp source,
etc., are all Not Free Software.
The question is simply a practical one: is it actually worth our while
to repackage upstream sources to remove unused non-free (but
redistributable) elements. Who does this benefit ?
If it enhances anyone's freedom (or to put it another way, if failing
to do it would risk harming anyone's freedom) then that would be a
good reason to do it, but at the moment I don't see where that risk
comes from. The effect is just to make us do work.
The main objection, it seems to me, to the presence of these files is
that removing them is the only sure way to make sure that the actual
package build doesn't use them somehow. But that objective could be
met by some kind of filtering by dpkg-source at unpack time.
Ian.
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