On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 11:41:08AM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> depend on it go into contrib. but what if the packages is not even in
> non-free, you will have a package depending on a package that is compiled
> differently by every user. I don't know what this can make to bug reports.
No package can depend on a package that is not even in non-free. Be sure to
get mail bombed by the buildd's if you upload packages like that.
> i said it in the original mail, i think i agree with that, but the issue is
fine
> (volutarilly ?) obscured by strange ballots and flamming discution.
Now that is a completely different thing. I did not understand the ballot
and I usually ignore flamewars. I am waiting for the real ballot, which joe
normal debian developer can understand. But its no use mixing up technical
discussions, philosophy and flamewars.
> No, there are package where you cannot see the source, there are packages
> which only can be distributed as source + patch (well it is dfsg free, but
???
> there was talk to change this) there is package that is free in spirit but
> non-free because of bad licence wording and the author don't care. There is
> package that are free but you cannot use it for commercial purpose. there is
> package that is free, but you cannot ship with some other package, there is
> package that is free but cannot be used for military research or other such
> limitation.
All of these are non-free and the authors need a little convincing to change
the license of their package.
> and then there is package like lha, which is non-free, but i think nobody
> knows what happened to the author and it is not actively developped anymore
> (at least the one in debian). And m68k boot floppies use lha, isn't it ?
Nope, I kicked it out long ago. I said so several times on the debian-boot
list, and I said if thats the only reason why the boot-floppies are in
contrib, its time to change that.
> you cannot pack them all in the same bag. It was ok for now, because we put
> them all in non-free, and told people to check the licence for themself. but
> if we remove non-free, what will happen to those, almost free packages. Will
You swore an oath on the DFSG, didn't you?
> we allow more almost free but non-free packages in main ? will we move them to
not possible, neither contrib
> contrib ? will we just remove them, let the big one (netscape & co) be
> distributed by some volunteer and let forget the other one ?
IIRC, that was the thing the ballot was supposed to be about.
> I am in favor of the removing the reference to non-free in the DFSG, but this
> don't mean we have to remove it from the archive all at once immediately like
> is proposed. and anyway, if you remove netscape, how big is non-free ?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/debian/dists/woody/non-free>du -s -m *
65 binary-all
79 binary-i386
37MB of that are netscape I guess. Not really worth the fuss I would say.
That stuff fits on the small-removable-media-I-do-not-find-reliable, you
could probably have binaries for all arches on one CD. Do we really have to
waste so much time on that?
> What i am not happy with is the coup like manner of having done this in late
> stage of the potato freeze, during holiday season, and with things escalating
> to amendment and counter amendment in an attempt to disinterest or confuse
> people until the thing get passed.
As usual, nothing happened yet, right? And it will be hard to remove contrib
and non-free from all the CDs out there, so what?
> I have seen articles claiming that debian is organized in a democratic way
> (well we are, not we have a constitution and such), but those methods are not
note?
> ok. More akin to what happens in the banana republics.
Have you ever been to parliament? I think its even worse there, and they run
our countries. Maybe I should come to Strassbourg and we visit the european
parliament, that would be fun.
Christian
