Hi, Quoting Bas Wijnen (2015-08-29 16:36:03) > On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 03:54:56PM +0200, Jan Hauke Rahm wrote: > > On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 01:15:21PM +0200, Paul Wise wrote: > > > non-free/docs > > > non-free/firmware > > > non-free/drivers > > > non-free/web > > > non-free/comm > > > non-free/formats > > > non-free/apps > > > > I don't care much for making this more complicated, but splitting > > non-free may find many (even reasonable) metrics to do so. > > What you're describing is debtags. For users who want that sort of control, > it > may be useful to add functionality to apt to hide packages that match some > rule > involving debtags. It will download the full package list, but it only > presents what the user chose to see. > > [...] > > Think of some package with a non-commercial clause in its otherwise free > > license. Many of our users are non-commercial and could use > > non-free/non-commercial. Or think of those non-military/non-evil licenses > > which (almost) any private citizen and even many companies could use. > > Everything in non-free can be used by people, otherwise we couldn't distribute > it. If people want to only not use things they aren't allowed to use, they > should enable all of non-free and read the licenses.
as far as I understand it, the problem that a splitting of non-free is supposed to solve is that users might want non-free firmware but want to avoid accidentally installing any other package from non-free. While creating a non-free/firmware area will certainly solve this particular problem, maybe there is a solution which will solve even more similar problems in an even better way? Allowing apt to pin (or otherwise filter) packages using debtags, for example, sounds like a solution that would solve this problem while at the same time allowing a wide range of other uses as well. Wrt licenses, maybe packages using machine readable d/copyright could gain a automatically generated field that would allow apt to pin (or otherwise filter) packages by license? That way people could enable non-free but limit it to Creative Commons packages or GDFL packages - or whatever other license they find okay even though the DFSG does not. cheers, josch
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