On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 18:47:53 -0400 Evan Prodromou wrote: > > Perhaps my choice of words was poor, but I think that emulators fall > > into their own class of software because they rely on what is > > generally commercial, non-free (and honestly, quite probably > > illegal) software in order to run, which is why they fall into > > contrib. > > I guess I'm just not sure I buy that an emulator is materially > different from a script interpreter, DFSG-wise.
I agree: they are not conceptually different from interpreters or JVMs
or image viewers or audio/video players, and so on.
They don't depend on ROM images: it's quite the opposite instead!
ROM images depend on an appropriate emulator to be executed.
$ python
Python 2.1.3 (#1, Sep 7 2002, 15:29:56)
[GCC 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> {Ctrl-D}
$
This interpreter runs perfectly fine, even without any script to
execute...
>From an interpreter point of view, a script is just data to process.
Similarly Kaffe would be in main even if there were no DFSG-free Java
programs available (correct me if I'm wrong).
A Java program cannot go in main if it cannot be executed by a DFSG-free
JVM, because it depends on a JVM (or on a JIT compiler or on a
java-to-native-code-compiler such as GJC).
I think that DFSG-free emulators should be in main as long as they don't
*depend* on non-free packages.
Usefulness is, IMHO, a completely different matter.
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