Hi, I just thought I'd pop by, subscribe, and toss this idea in, because I've been thinking of it for quite a while. While I haven't searched the archives yet (sorry if this has come up in the past), I haven't seen anything on it, so here goes:
Why not split non-US into "crypto" and "patents"? The reason being: different countries have different laws, and splitting content from presentation is generally considered a good idea. This would end all this "put crypto in main" talk because US based entities could distribute crypto and main, while French (for example) could distribute main and patents. Or something like that. I'm thinking that the Right Way To Do It would be something like tagging packages with info of whether they have crypto, patents, both, or neither, or if they are non-free and have crypto, or if they're just non-free, etc etc, and having software sorting it out automatically. Preferably having it done so that new tags could be added later, in case a new issue pops up (if packages like fortune-offensive would be chosen illegal in some countries, for example, or if a bible-study package would be forbidden somewhere, or if certain book-packages like anarchism and cfi would be. Okay, these are just examples, and bad ones). This would be hard work of course, so perhaps I should just shut up. I was just wondering if anyone had been thinking along these lines before? The main advantage would be the ability to easily make custom packages for different countries. (While totally off-topic to debian-legal, but very related to this email, another package-related idea would be to allow "subcategories" like internationalizion packages, or theme-packages, that only the interested would want to descend into. Or just use tagging with that as well.) Listen, I'm sorry if this entire letter is off-topic and should go to a dpgk-related list instead. I'm new to the mailing list part of Debian, I've just been a user for a while. Please let me know. Sunnanvind
