On Sat, 01 May, 1999, James Troup wrote: > I've just rejected tik from Incoming[1] because it was targeted for > main and as far as I can see depends on a non-free server to be > useful. I've argued this before, for example when Adam wanted to > 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. > > So, opinions? So IRC and AOL are free clients, non-free servers with no free alternatives, can we do the same with file formats? catdoc, mswordview and word2x all read word documents but there is new free software for creating word documents, should these be in non-free? Are there any free tools for making MP3s? or are all free MP3 players basically relient on non-free software? xfstt, the TrueType Font Server for X11, are there are free truetype font creation tool, or does the fact that there are free truetype fonts avaliable make it ok. Same goes for freetype2, the free true type library, I think enlightenment and imagemagik depend on it. We have free tools capable of making audio-cds I think, so they are ok. If xanim was free, it would still not go in main because there is no free software for making videos and if the free linux flash plugin was packaged, then it would not be in main, because there is not a free flash creation tool. Smsclient is used for sending messages to mobile phones, and pagers, none of their source code is free. On the client/server front mysql, was once source split, so the GPL client could go in main, it could access the server on another machine across a network, I think this could be thought of as cheating. I am neither for or against extending the list of packages that fit in main. We do not want to spill on two three CDs do we? -- I consume, therefore I am
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