On Lu, 05 dec 11, 21:55:28, Alexey Eromenko wrote: > > contrib area: > "The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to > work with the Debian distribution, but which require software outside > of the distribution to either build or function." > > This definition does not say 'non-free web services' - but points in > such direction. > > I hope that both my "FFox" and Andrei's "Pidgin" examples are useful > for our discussion.
Expanding more on the pidgin example, as far as I can tell pidgin has one single library (libpurple) for all protocols. In this case the maintainer would have to either: 1. put pidgin in contrib even though libpurple also supports free services (IRC & XMPP at least) 2. introduce a libpurple-dfsg for main with only the free protocols and one in contrib with support for all protocols IMVHO this is too much work for too little gain. It might happen though if you manage to convince *upstream* to split the library (free/non-free protocol at a minimum, but who decides which is non-free? per protocol would be even better) so that each library can be distributed as Debian sees fit (see pidgin-skype, which is in contrib). Also, you don't specify what you understand by "non-free web services". Remember that both Google and Facebook use XMPP for chat (a free protocol) and they might be using 100% free software on their servers. Please don't get me wrong, I would love to able to use my system without any package from contrib or non-free, but free software is just not there *yet*. Free software is mostly on par with non-free software except a few special cases, but it is still not enough. It has to be so much better that users will *massively* choose free software, despite the marketing and the migration costs and whatnot. This is where resources should go, not to alienating users by making it even more difficult to switch than it already is. Kind regards, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic
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