Re: ndiswrapper
On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:17:07 -0400, Raul Miller <moth.debian@gmail.com> said:
> 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.]
This is a minor bug, and mostly irrelevant to freeness of the
package.
> 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.
Can you understand the difference between implementing an free
interface, and having non-free software use the interface, and
requiring non-free software to work?
There was some free software that was used as a demo for
ndiswrapper (no longer useful, since a free Linux driver appeared).
Even now, if one wants to create a free windows driver and use
ndiswrapper to load the same code on Linux, the package can be used
to advance freedom.
Since tools come first, and then come free packages using the
tools, I think we should not be removing ndiswrapper from Debian.
manoj
--
broad-mindedness, n: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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