Re: ndiswrapper
On 9/15/06, Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> wrote:
On Thu, 14 Sep 2006, Raul Miller wrote:
> Put differently, I do not understand the distinction between
>
> "The purpose of the ndiswrapper package is to provide an ABI layer
> on top of the Linux kernel that is compatible with the interface for
> Windows NDIS drivers"
>
> and
>
> "wrapper packages or other sorts of free accessories for non-free
> programs."
>
> (That said, I do understand that ndiswrapper is free software.
> Everything in contrib is free software.)
The different is that in one case, the package ndiswrapper doesn't
need to change to work with a free NDIS wrapper.
I don't see why ndiswrapper should be different, in this regard,
than uae. As far as I can tell, there's far more free software
that works specifically with uae than works specifically with
ndiswrapper.
For that matter, I can think of cases where the package
ndiswrapper would have to change to work with some
free software that depends on it, even as it is currently
packaged. [If the hypothetical free package which depends
on it is a higher priority, ndiswrapper would need to be
changed to reflect the increased priority.]
That said, there is little value in packaging software
around hypothetical packages which do not exist. And,
for some odd reason, policy does not ask that we
package software based on hypothetical packages
which do not exist.
Put differently, I still do not see any practical distinction
between the two cases I originally quoted above.
And, personally, I am not prepared to vote for or against
a proposal I do not understand.
--
Raul
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