On Tue, Mar 31, 1998 at 04:04:15PM -0500, Stephen Carpenter wrote: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, Stephen Carpenter wrote: > > > : I would like to see non-free debian packages on CDs... > > : it would make my life and the lives of many people easier... > > Of course it would. > > as the center of my own universe I think thats reason enough(now if in > boston they would only get rid of the harvard, > central, and kendal train stations I coul dget to work faster...)
We try to make it easy for everyone, not just for individuals. So we have to choose a subset of packages that fullfill the intersection of all requirements. This is defined in the dfsg. Packages that break at least one of our requirements go to non-free, packages that only depend on non-free packages are in contrib. The point is that we already try to put as much packages in the main distribution as possible. The requirement is that the software can be used by everyone. Even Bill Gates could port the Debian distribution to Windows and sell it for 200$ (most non-free packages do not allow it for one reason or another ;) > > Therefore, two immediate solutions come to mind. Someone can either > > dredge through the licenses and figure out what may be safely > > distributed out of non-free, > > I am looking now at non-free....its just a big mess...I woul dlove to see it > organized somewhat...pu tmore into line with > what the debian dist looks like > even tho it is not part of debian...and it is "non-free"... > as for working out the licenses... Please don't imply that we treat non-free as step-child, because this is not true. In debian 2.0, non-free and contrib are organized in sections, as the main distribution is. There is non-free/libs, non-free/sound etc... > I like that idea of organizing thme a bit more by license... > some things...like "these are what can be put on a CDROM and sold and these > can't" > I would be willing to work on at least putting a list together if anyone > else is interested > in helping out... > In fact (more because I want to have them and need to fill space on my new > "personal CD" but I intend tot akea lookat the licences) > I am going to download all of non-free bins to take a look at You are welcome. You are not the first one suggesting it. Some trials failed because it is a lot of work. You probably want to make some big groups of common non-freeness, and ignore some misc programs that don't fit in the categories. Note that such a list is only usefull for one release, as the licenses are subject to change sometimes... For example: 1) No commercial use allowed (can not be sold on CD) 2) Only a small fee allowed (can be sold on CD with most vendors) 3) other. You will soon find out that there are some very weired copyright texts, and that we are really trying what we can, but we can do nothing when the author of the copyright is clueless und unwilling to change the license. Our main problem are not non-free programs that forbid commercial use or restrict to a small fee, but the real problem are individual licenses (for example, may not be used on Microsoft platforms, or by south africa police and other weired stuff). Good luck, Marcus -- "Rhubarb is no Egyptian god." Debian GNU/Linux finger brinkmd@ Marcus Brinkmann http://www.debian.org master.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] for public PGP Key http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
