John Goerzen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > James Troup <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > upload his netscape-base (IIRC) to main. The package (like tik) was > > undoubtedly DFSG free (Adam wrote it), but without netscape it served > > no useful purpose. I think free software which depends on non-free > > software to be useful belongs in contrib. I think this is the spirit > > of the policy manual, but it's certainly not explicitly stated there. > > First, you are removing a very important distinction: You have no > control over what is on the other end of the connection.
Eh? So what? > Secondly, "useful" is vague. Yes, it is vague. I was not proposing an amendment to policy, I was posting a FYI note. As I had hoped Branden extrapolated on the point far better than I ever could have. > What is useful? How about `what the majority of people who want to use the application would use it for?' That's just a rough idea. As I've said, it was just a quick note. > Back to the first point. Perhaps I use lynx exclusively for > e-commerce, and the only sites I use are running non-free servers. > Thus, lynx is not useful without non-free software. *to you*. I had hoped people would agree that tik is not useful without the server. It seems so obvious to me... > > Note: the problem here is the *exclusively* non-free nature of > > required software; if there was a free server to connect to > > (e.g. with samba, you don't _need_ to connect to a M$ server), I > > wouldn't have a problem with it being in main. > > But that's not correct. The program can start, and it can run, on a > machine with solely free software. contrib is for things that > cannot even do that without non-free software. Well you could make a fake QT which allowed things to start up, but nothing more. Could we then put programs in main with a fakeqt | qt dependency? > You are penalizing a piece of free software because another piece of > free software, perhaps not even for Unix, doesn't exist yet. Well *DUH*, that's the case with any free software in contrib which is linked against a library for which a free equivalent doesn't exist. > ICQ clients are in the same boat. They have been allowed into main. It wasn't me that accepted them? > Please don't reject something simply because it's from AOL. Please don't troll. I already said on IRC that it's got *nothing* to do with what the software is or who it comes from. If samba couldn't connect to anything but a Microsoft server and it was a NEW package, I would reject it also, and I _rely_ on Samba for my daily job. -- James
