RE: [PROPOSED] Change package relations policy to remove referenc es to non-free from main
> s/Recommends/Enhances/ I take it?
>
> > a reverse relation is the only way to completely remove references
> > to non-main packages from main, which is what this proposal is all
> > about. It's not all about design, there is a political message here
> [..]
>
> RMS originally suggested simply not displaying those suggests that
> couldn't be met in dselect. I didn't like the idea because
> dselect wasn't
> likely to get fixed in such a manner that I could cause
> dselect to display
> suggests that can't be met. With active dpkg development
> happening once
> again, I think this would be less hackish than using Enahnces for
> everything by far. (But if someone has a better idea..)
Well, the problem sees to be this:
person A is installing Debian on his system. However, he has some
restrictions as to what packages he can use (for example, because his
distribution only has certain packages available (practical example), or
because his employer has placed certain restrictions as to what licenses
are considered 'risk-free to use' within a company (political example)).
Why not have a Legal: or License: field that specifies the license(s)
the package adheres to? This does not impact dpkg/apt in any way (as I
would assume they would ignore the field), and the only programs that
need changes would be those that select the packages, as several people
have proposed. This also saves package maintainers of keeping track of
legal issues that may not be necessary anyway. You could then have a
config file that lists all legal licenses that would be accepted on a
certain system.
If you would enforce a certain license-policy, I suppose dpkg could be
changed as well, to prevent temptation to install things by hand, with a
--force-legal to override.
You could even get rid of non-free this way. Or am I being too ambitious
here ?
Ronald
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