Re: Bug#353277: ndiswrapper in main
Anthony Towns writes ("Re: Bug#353277: ndiswrapper in main"):
> 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;
What, then, is the intended meaning when the policy manual talks about
`wrappers' for non-free programs ? (Feel free to say that the wording
is suboptimal and shouldn't be read so closely.)
Also, I think this approach is likely to be a hostage to fortune.
Software systems are becoming ever more complex and `vertical'
layering is nowadays sometimes absent - sometimes you can't really say
which piece of software is `above' or `below' (ie, which depends on
the other).
> * 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.
As I said, I think there is a fundamental distinction between the case
where the decision to use non-free software is made my the Debian
user, and where it is made by someone else. Do you agree or
disagree ? Do you think that's not relevant at all ?
> 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
I don't follow the argument here at all. A library can still be
useful even if nothing in Debian depends on it, either because some
older Debian package still depends on it, or because a user's own
software depends on it.
The purpose of a library is not just to run binaries provided by other
people; it is also to allow a user to build and then run their own
programs.
This is quite different from ndiswrapper unless you're going to claim
that people are using it for driver development.
> (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
The reason we need to have free players for proprietary formats and
free clients for proprietary servers is because our users can't
completely control what formats other people send them and what
servers they are required to use.
> (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)
>
> 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.
Do you see the distinctions that I am making, here and in my previous
mails ? If you say it's not fair or consistent to have a different
answer in (say) (a) or (b), I think you should explain why (or at
least state that) the distinctions that I'm using are wrong or
irrelevant.
Are there any other packages which are in a similar state to
ndiswrapper by _both_ the criteria I set out and by your asymmetric
dependency criterion ?
Ian.
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