Re: Bug#353277: ndiswrapper in main
On 3/29/06, Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> wrote:
> Does the fact we are boith ignorant mean that the authors and
> users of ndiswrapper be penalized?
Yes!
...ok, I don't mean exactly that, but I don't reject it either.
Fundamentally, the only thing that keeps me from releasing a GPLed
work-alike for ANY piece of non free-software (let's say Windows
Vesta, if you want a concrete example) is my ignorance of how it works
and what it does.
This issue also holds for supplying the dependencies of software in
Contrib.
> I don't know how to use a large number of interpreters and
> compilers in Debian (scheme, python, ...). Presumably,
> you, too, are not omniscient (If you are, I do apologize, god).
> If there is an intersection of these sets, should it have a
> bearing on the freeness of the packages that live in that
> intersection?
I'm not asking for omniscience, nor any other signs of god-ness.
The technical issue, I think, is: is the package complete in and of
itself? If not, does Main contain what the package needs to make it
complete.
If we have libpureschemeeval.0.1.so which implements a complete scheme
interpreter, which only supports the dotted pair data-structure and
requires everything else to be implemented in the calling environment
(parsing, garbage collection, result formatting, ...), that's fine.
If, however, after some number of years, no one is using it (perhaps,
among other reasons, because it doesn't exactly implement the right
semantics), I'd be rather dubious about why we have the package at
all.
If, in addition, there are a number of users of the package, and all
of them use it to wire gcc up to Microsoft's SQL Server, so it runs
under linux, I'd be very very uncomfortable about this package.
I'd feel much better about it if either (a) it was used actively for
some obvious free software purpose, or (b) it was pulled from the
distribution.
Then again, I don't think we (the technical committee) would have the
authority to pull the package. But I also don't think we should give
this kind of situation unqualified approval.
> > I don't understand why that means it's not in your universe.
>
> Cause I am all fere and pure, dude. Do try to keep up :)
Hmm... let me try again: I don't think your keyboard and display are
in your universe. So what I want to know is: who do you get to do
your typing for you?
--
Raul
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