On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 19:55, Matthew Palmer wrote: > To re-quote policy, "The Depends field should be used if > the depended-on package is required for the depending package to provide a > significant amount of functionality." Usefulness is a function of > functionality. No functionality, no utility (usefulness). For an emulator, > no ROM, no functionality, no utility. If there's no free ROM, then we go > through the chain again, ending at "not in main".
That is nice sophistry, but I don't think it holds water. The order of dependence that you're describing is quite backwards. It's unusual (although not unheard-of) for a Debian package for an interpreter or emulator to Depends on programs that run under than interpreter, rather than the other way around. I don't think that many of us would be pleased if the 'perl' package Depends-depended on, say, 'prcs-utils' or 'mp32ogg'. 'perl' needs SOME data -- even console-entered data -- to be useful, but it doesn't need any PARTICULAR data to be useful. perl is still quite useful even if I don't have mp32ogg installed. Not only that, but we fully expect users to provide their OWN data for that software -- whether free or not. An MP3 player doesn't depend on the Free Software Song to operate. An image viewer doesn't depend the Tux image. It's OK to use non-free data with a free program in main. That's not a violation of our guidelines. Yes, we all need to be needed, in a hippy-squishy way -- Debian packages inclusive. (Have you hugged your packages today?) But saying that a Debian package Depends on packages that Depends on it is taking a mushy truism to an absurd technical conclusion. In closing: I think it's a mistake to leave out Free Software just because there's not Free Data for that software to work with. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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