** On Jun 11, John Goerzen scribbled: > grendel@vip.net.pl (Marek Habersack) writes: > > > That would be acceptable, but I see just two points. First is a technical > > one: > > > > - if a package is fetched from a site outside of the Debian control, the > > Debian project cannot guarantee the quality of service, because it cannot > > guarantee the availability of exactly that version of the software in > > question. It may well happen that the software will have been released in > > a new version, with the older one removed from the archives, while the > > Debian package still needs the older one. This, of course, applies to the > > network installation (but probably at least half of Debian installations > > is done off the net) > > This is a question. It can be partially remedied with wildcards. You > might note that FreeBSD's ports system works in this way, and that is > the primary way that they distribute packages not part of the standard > system (which is much smaller than ours). Yes, that's correct. But their system is quite clumsy. The Debian tools may provide for better management than that, I suppose. Perhaps an "always valid" source list could be employed here together with a modification of apt that would allow it to use a remote sources.list? Imagine such situation: people maintaining the non-free wrappers are obligated to make sure that this hypothetical remote sources.list contains a valid URL for the source of their package and then the Debian build tools use apt-get to get the source of the package the wrapper needs from the indicated location? What do you think about it? > > Second is political (and is my pure assumption): > > > > - the proponents of removal of the non-free software will probably argue > > that if your proposal is accepted, the non-free software would still be > > associated with Debian... > > I have already indicated that this solution would be acceptable to me. Yes, I haven't read your other posts before writing the above. Please ignore the above statement, I withdraw it. marek
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