Re: beta status

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 08:40:37PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
> > Joeyh, i wonder what you expect to get tested with regard to old-world, since
> > those floppies we have doesn't support miboot and have no chance of working.
> > I think it would be actually better to completely remove them from the beta
> > than try to claim we support this method while we do not.
> 
> You will have plenty of time to make whatever changes you like after the
> beta is released.

Cool :)

> > 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).
> 
> Debian has distributed plenty of undistributable software in the past,
> yes. Sometimes even in main.

But not anymore i take it, if so please please please, disable the build of
the mibootless floppies for official releases, as it is a support nightmare i
have to deal with, and hardly fair to our users. Did we even mention the fact
that those floppies where not expected to work in the sarge release notes, i
don't think so.

Also, miboot may be non-free, but i have some doubt about it not being
distributable. True we have no explicit premission for those 200 or so m68k
assembly calls, especially as each mac-os release of pre-X, has had support
for creating (and thus distributing) such bootable floppies.

Friendly,

Sven Luther