I think the question is this:
If a program has a free license, but cannot actually be used
except to communicate with some non-free software
running on another site, should such a program be allowed
to go in main?
I think that it is ok to put those programs in main, because they
don't require you to *have non-free software on your machine*. The
license of the server that you talk with doesn't directly affect you,
because that server is on someone else's machine.
I don't see much difference in practice between these three cases:
(1) Communicating with a site running a proprietary server package.
(2) Communicating with a site running a GPL-covered server package
with private modifications that have not been released (something
that the GPL permits).
(3) Communicating with a site running a free server package
that operates on data not available anywhere else.
In all three cases, there is just one site you can talk with
to get the job done.
Dependence on the functionality available in a proprietary server
could be a real problem, in a scenario where what people would really
want to do is run that code on their own machines. But I don't
think that is the case with the ICQ server.
I think that the questions I raised a few months ago--how to treat the
packages that are not in main, whether Debian installation will invite
the user to install them--make more of a difference.
