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Re: Software in main that is throughly useless without non-free software



On Wed, May 05, 1999 at 09:50:48PM -0600, Gordon Matzigkeit wrote:
> >>>>> Joseph Carter writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
>  JC> I came up with a list of packages affected:
> 
>  JC>      afterstep, aview, cgoban, cjk-latex, dox, enlightenment,
>  JC> enlightenment-docs, enlightenment-nosound,
>  JC> enlightenment-theme-brushedmetal, enlightenment-theme-clean,
>  JC> enlightenment-theme-cleanbig, enlightenment-theme-estepclassic,
>  JC> enlightenment-theme-estepnew, enlightenment-theme-ice,
>  JC> enlightenment-theme-shinymetal, freetype-tools, freetype1,
>  JC> freetype1-dev, freetype2, freetype2-dev, freewrl, fvwmconf, gem,
>  JC> gltt-bin, gltt2, gltt2-dev, hatman, html2ps, imagemagick,
>  JC> imgsizer, libgfont, libgfont-dev, libmagick4-dev,
>  JC> libmagick4-lzw-dev, libmagick4g, libmagick4g-lzw, mgp, moonlight,
>  JC> mozilla, netscape3, netscape4, pcd2html, pd, perlmagick, php3,
>  JC> php3-cgi, php3-cgi-gd, php3-gd, pike-image, roxen, webmagick,
>  JC> xfstt, xmbdfed, xmorph, yudit
> 
> You're being silly.  Go back and figure out which of these *require*
> TTFs (i.e. won't work with a truly free font format).  It's okay if
> they depend on freetype.

Oh no it's not....  Any package which depends on a package not in main
may not itself be in main.  Otherwise we'd have splay in main even though
there is an X version as well that builds with a non-free version of qt.

We have not yet decided this applies to a simple suggests, but we have
agreed that it WILL apply whenever Ian fixed dpkg.



>  JC> The whole point is simple:  How far do we want to go?
> 
> The lines are a lot clearer than you imply.  Try looking for them, and
> you'll see that they're there, and can be described without invoking
> personal taste.

Obviously not so clear as you think if a dependency on a non-main package
is allowed in main as far as you're concerned!



>  JC> Are we going put lilo in contrib because of the non-free BIOS in
>  JC> your PC next?
> 
> Nope.  BIOS is hardware, not software.  You can't have a working
> computer without a BIOS, so it's silly to argue about the usefulness
> of lilo on a computer that doesn't have a BIOS.

Sure you can.  You still need SOMETHING to bootstrap the machine, however
all that needs is a kernel image and a way to get it into memory...  The
only reason lilo requires the BIOS is because the kernel image needs to
be loaded off the disk and lilo doesn't know how to read a disk.

Also, hardware implies that it has no source code and can't be upgraded
other than changing hardware.  I just changed my BIOS last week by
downloading a piece of non-free software and installing it.  A necessary
evil for my system.  Would be nice if I didn't need that evil, but at the
moment there's nothing I can do about it.

--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>            Debian GNU/Linux developer
PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE            The Source Comes First!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Overfiend ponders doing an NMU of asclock, in which he simply changes
  the extended description to "If you bend over and put your head between
  your legs, you can read the time off your assclock."

<doogie> Overfiend: go to bed.

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