On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 02:09:35PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> WHEREAS
> 1. ndiswrapper's purpose is to allow non-free drivers to be used.
> THE COMMITTEE CONCLUDES THAT
> 6. ndiswrapper belongs in contrib.
> AND THE COMMITTEE THEREFORE REQUESTS AS FOLLOWS
> 9. ftpmasters and the ndiswrapper maintainers should cooperate to move
> nsidwrapper to contrib. [...]
> 10. The Policy Manual maintainers should take steps to adjust the
> language regarding main and contrib to clarify and improve it. [...]
On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 08:30:33PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> WHEREAS
> 1. ndiswrapper's purpose is to allow non-debian (and typically non-free)
> drivers to be used.
> THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT
> 6. ndiswrapper belongs in contrib.
> AND THE COMMITTEE THEREFORE REQUESTS AS FOLLOWS
> 9. ftpmasters and the ndiswrapper maintainers should cooperate to move
> nsidwrapper to contrib.
Okay, so I'll vote against both these.
After the discussions so far, I'm inclined towards the following two views
of our policy on this:
* first, that dependencies are one way -- programs depend on
libraries, but libraries don't depend on the programs that use
them;
* and second, that programs that only operate when interacting with
non-free programs, whether over the net or via data files, aren't
considered to depend on those non-free programs.
That means that:
(a) libraries that aren't used by any DFSG-free programs are okay
for main, so packages like libamstd-ruby1.8 that provide a library
that no package happens to use are still fine
(b) ndiswrapper is okay for main (non-free drivers depend on it, and
there are no free packages that depend on it, but it does not depend
on anything non-free)
(c) free viewers/players for proprietary formats (Word documents,
mp3 players, etc) are okay for main
(d) free clients for proprietary protocols (for which there is no
free server) are okay for main
All of which are (ttbomk) existing practice.
It would be consistent to invert either principle; but I don't think it
would be practical to remove packages that would be classified under
either (a) or (c) from main, and I think the relationship between (a)
and (b) and (c) and (d) are pretty strong, to the point I can't really
see why it would be fair to drop one without also dropping the other.
Cheers,
aj
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