On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 07:42:06AM -0500, Walter Landry wrote: > > > I guess the meat of my question applies to ndiswrapper > > > <http://ndiswrapper.sf.net> as well. ndiswrapper itself is GPL, but > > > to work > > > properly, requires the Windows drivers for the network devices it is > > > trying > > > to configure. Does this somehow prevent it from going into Debian, or > > > could > > > the package just request those files from a Windows partition or > > > something? > > Does ndiswrapper require them to work properly? The main part of > > ndiswrapper is a kernel module that I think provides an API normally > > found on Windows. The package also provides tools to load and use the > > Windows drivers. Even with no Windows driver loaded, the API is there, > > so it could be seen as "working properly" but unused. As far as I can > > tell, the Windows drivers are not used by the build process at all. > I think it is analogous to Quake. Quake's source is free, but to do > anything useful (or fun) requires the shareware wads. So until > someone actually writes a free driver that ndiswrapper can use, I > would say that it belongs in contrib. Agreed; if it's GPL, it's ok to distribute, but not in main because it requires non-free code to function. Depending on how you view the question of "intent to link", writing maintainer scripts for the package to automatically find the Windows binaries for you may also be on shaky ground. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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