On 26.02.2014 16:19, Bas Wijnen wrote: > On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 02:33:44PM +0100, Markus Koschany wrote: >>> Keeping *all* non-free software out of main is actually a great feature >>> of Debian. I think you don't appreciate that feature, which is fine. >> If you are not willing to hold a frank and reasonable discussion, then >> it is pointless to continue the conversation. > > It sounds like I offended you, which was certainly not my intention; It should be possible to discuss topics such as "what is source in regard to artwork" or "how do we define free artwork" without being stigmatised as someone who don't appreciate free software. If I did not care about why games are in main, contrib or non-free, I would hardly spend my time on such discussions. [...] >> I was speaking about really large source tarballs, several hundreds of >> megabyte and not the casual mini game. See also the data.debian.org >> discussion. > > I know, but I don't see the fundamental difference. data.debian.org is > the technical solution to the philosophical standpoint that we do indeed > want to provide all source, even for huge files. AFAIK there's no > discussion about whether we want it; it's only about how we achieve it. Exactly. How to achieve it. That's the point here. data.debian.org doesn't exist yet thus outlining available options for the time being is a valid topic. [...] >> I'm also not totally convinced that it is really necessary to ship, >> e.g. flac files > > It's not really necessary to ship any other source code either; the > binaries will work fine without it, and we can provide a list of links > instead. Why is artwork different from code in this respect? > > Also, flac files are hardly an example of "huge data"... If you ship games with dozens of music files, flac files can quickly occupy a lot of disc space since one file is often 20-30 MB large on average. Drascula's music files are downloadable in different formats, in mp3, ogg and flac. When I packaged my initial version, my intention was to ship the flac files and I wanted to convert them to ogg during build time later but my sponsor suggested to ship only the ogg files instead. Since the music isn't really concert-like, you won't hear any differences, so I agreed because it was reasonable, we saved 220 MB and I mentioned the flac alternative in README.source. Some people might argue that flac files are the source as well as xcf files might be the superior form for png files. However you seem to agree that providing a list of links is sufficient in such cases, what makes me wonder why you criticized my remarks about size constraints in the first place. [...] > Many people > don't really care about main being entirely free, and that is not a > problem, and not something we need to "fix". However, some people do > care about it, and they are the reason that we have the split between > main, contrib and non-free. From your posts, I am guessing that you > have contrib and non-free in your sources.list. If a game is not in > main, does that make a difference for you as a user? It still show up > in your package list, you can still install and play it. And here you are again alleging that I don't want main to be entirely free. I perceive this kind of negative assumptions as an attempt to discredit my efforts to work on a change for games which deserve to be in main like the Cube2 engine or Red Eclipse. I strongly believe that both comply with the DFSG but that nobody has worked on them so far. Of course it does matter to me whether a game is in main or not. It's absolutely no wonder that nobody wants to change the status quo and work on packages like sauerbraten as long as an unspecific and destructive "holier-than-thou"-discussion seems inevitable. > My point here is that for those who don't think "everything must be > free" (which is a perfectly valid opinion), there is no problem in > placing a package in non-free. You seem to want to try to put > everything in main, because otherwise people can't use it. But that is > not the case; programs in non-free are equally usable for our users as > programs in main. The point is _not_ that everything must be free that is non-free. The point is that everything which is already free must be recognized as free otherwise the distinction between non-free and free becomes pointless and credibility is lost. It is a serious issue when you place free software and artwork in non-free. This is equally bad as the opposite case. Regards, Markus
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