Re: [RFS] minigalaxy - simple GOG client
On Fri, 08 Jan 2021 at 15:16:31 +0100, Matija Nalis wrote:
> Basically, you can ask yourself a question "Would people still be
> using this package, if all functionality that downloads stuff
> outside of Debian "main" archive was removed from it?"
This can't be where the line gets drawn in practice, because there are
lots of programs in main whose primary purpose is to download things
that aren't in main, such as web browsers and IMAP/POP email clients.
Removing all network clients from Debian (except maybe apt) would
certainly result in a 100% Free Software system, in the same way that
putting a powered-off computer in a bank vault results in it being secure:
it's true, but a lot less practically useful than what we have now.
Another question that might give something closer to the right answer
is: if we imagine the non-main software that it downloads/loads/uses
existed in main, contrib or non-free (whichever was appropriate),
would the manager/downloader have a Depends or Recommends on it, or
something weaker?
In the case of lgogdownloader and minigalaxy, I suspect the answer
would be no, because they don't require any particular game in order to
do what they do. What they do is "download/manage games from GOG",
and they can do that whether or not you have any particular game installed:
the same reasoning as Firefox not needing a dependency on any packages that
contain HTML.
The hypothetical packaged games might want a Recommends on minigalaxy
if it has functionality analogous to Steam, like tracking achievements
and managing saved games. (That's probably more like a Suggests, though.)
I think that test also gives the right answer for things like the
old flashplugin-nonfree package, where the purpose of the package was
"play Flash animations", and the fact that it did that by downloading
the plugin out-of-band is an implementation detail. If it could have
(legally) achieved the same goal by having a copy of the plugin *in*
non-free, it would have had a Depends on the actual plugin instead.
smcv
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