Why is openoffice in Contrib?

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

This message was in the DWN:

> Building CD Images without Contrib. Tollef Fog Heen [14]wrote a patch
> against the debian-cd package to allow building a CD image without
> including the contrib archive. Raphaël Hertzog [15]agreed that this
> was a good idea, as long as inclusion of contrib remained the default.
> At first he thought it might be an idea to remove contrib
> automatically if non-free was removed, however, it was [16]pointed out
> that packages such as OpenOffice.org are in contrib but do not depend
> on non-free parts.

First off, the inclusion of contrib is not now the default and has no
business being the default because it is NOT part of Debian.

Secondly, since OpenOffice seems to be GPL'd, I am wondering why it is in
contrib instead of main.

Finally, I think it imprudent to use a single package as a test for whether
or not to include contrib on a CD, FTP site, or *anything* for that matter. 
The inclusion of contrib on CDs is a direct break with the conventions we
have established in our existing Social Contract and our way of making that
work, and if anything, highlights the need to excise these grafted-on pieces
of software from our archive.

-- John