Re: beta status

["Christian T. Steigies" <cts@debian.org>]

On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 12:01:17PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 11:57:12AM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 10:45:30AM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > > > Actually, we could simply make an exception for miboot and get it into the
> > > > > archive, i think it is no worse than other cases (like amiboot, which is
> > > > > linked to parts of amigaos, and thus non-free), and we do distribute those (or
> > > > > at least used to distribute those in the woody times).
> > > > 
> > > > Amiboot is not linked to parts of AmigaOS. It is linked to libnix.
> > > 
> > > which in turn is not in the archive, so amiboot can never be in anything but
> > 
> > It's statically linked (and libnix is public domain, according to Google :-).
> 
> Still not in debian/main, so amiboot needs to go to contrib.

libnix is an AmigaOS library, and is available on aminet, which IIRC predates 
Debian by a couple of years. Do you want to ship all free software on aminet
with Debian now, too?

 http://main.aminet.net/dev/gcc/libnixV1_1.readme
 Short:        A static library for gcc (V1.1)
 Author:       fleischr@izfm.uni-stuttgart.de, gnikl@informatik.uni-rostock.de
 Type:         dev/gcc
 Architecture: m68k-amigaos
 
 This is a new release of libnix - a static (link) library for gcc.
 Changes from the last release include mostly bug fixes but also
 a few new functions. Sources included.

As you see, this is a library for use with gcc, the AmigaOS version, which I assume
is free also, after all it is GNU gcc. gcc, and crossgcc, are available on Aminet
also. So where exactly does amiboot become non-free here? I wouldn't mind if 90% of
the debian archive contained Amiga software, it has been a while that I received
free Aminet CDs, but I guess some other arches might not like that waste of archive
space. 

Christian