Matthew Palmer wrote:
Let me ask you this: if there was an image viewer, which only viewed one format of images, and there were no images out there in that format, would you want to see that in Debian? What if there were images in that format, but in order to get them you'd have to break copyright law?
I think software usefulness is remarkably subjective and not something on which one should base inclusion in main. Perhaps usefulness is a better argument for what to include on installation media (versus what to leave in an online repository to pick up later).
That second case is pretty much where we stand with a *lot* of game console emulators out there -- the only way to get data to use with them is to break the law. Wonderful.
I'd be surprised if this is entirely true all the time everywhere. It might be mostly true, but there could be demos (for example) that are DFSG-free. In some countries it might be legal to make dumps of ROMs for one's own personal use. In either case, one might want an emulator to run the ROMs one obtained legally. This might not be the most popular use for emulators, but I don't have any way to measure the most popular use of emulators and that doesn't seem to be the criterion for inclusion in main. Perhaps Debian main's criteria are being interpreted from the perspective of American law?
The litmus test here is "a significant amount of functionality", not "will refuse to work at all without it", although that's a fairly good description of a console without a ROM.
Would one ROM cut it, then? I am working to determine if one ROM is available under a DFSG-free license right now. I don't have much to report yet except thanks to those who have supplied information to help me track down the copyright holder. I should know more soon and I plan to report what I've learned on debian-legal.
