Re: General Resolution: Handling of the non-free section: proposedBallot
On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 10:38:10AM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 05:48:23PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > Don't trivialise "on debian.org" to just an /etc/apt/sources.list entry
> > though. The advantage IMHO to having Debian host non-free packages is
> > quality control such as
> >
> > 1. Bug tracking though bugs.debian.org;
> > 2. Developers vetted and a GPG trust path guaranteed through
> > the new maintainer process;
> > 3. Non-free packages must meet same Debian policy as free packages,
>
> Actually, I think that only #1 is not trivial, in the case of
> reassigning bugs between main and non-free. Now personally, I don't
> believe that there are a lot of examples for this, but I don't have any
> data to back this up. I asked Colin Watson about this some days ago, and
> he said it would be rather difficult to get hard data on this.
Personally I think split BTSs is reason enough not to split the
distribution.
[..]
> Now, ad 2.:
>
> That's pretty easy, just use the debian-keyring to authenticate and
> perhaps (but that's outside the scope of what debian.org can set as
> policy) also let identified people with a trustpath to a DD contribute,
> possibly requiring being recommended by an AM in the NM process.
>
> That's purely a social problem, the technology is there.
>
> ad 3.:
>
> You'd have a BTS for this, just as for the real Debian.
However there is no reason why a third-party non-free.org would feel
compelled to limit themselves to our keyring and our policy. They might
well accept help from anyone who volunteers, but would they have an NM
process equivalent to ours? No reason why they would have to. They might
decide to install all their software in /opt.
What about filename clashes between main and non-free.org packages?
I think as soon as you get into installing non-debian.org packages on your
system you are heading for trouble. So I don't think we should
deliberately cause this trouble ourselves by splitting our distribution.
> Well, *I* will definetely not upload non-free packages to
> ftp.debian.org, simply to prevent the strenghtening of it. While I'd
Fine. I will continue to use the non-free software I require though.
> Well, dunno. For me, removing non-free from ftp.debian.org is an
> ethical imperative
I don't think you'll find anyone who doesn't want to see non-free
disappear eventually. The question is whether it's now or later.
I think non-free is unfortunately still useful and therefore it's not
time yet to remove it.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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