Re: non-free/contrib policy
>
> On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Christian Schwarz wrote:
>
> > Please have a look at the new version and tell me and hints how to make it
> > clearer. The separation of the distributions is very important for Debian
> > and everyone should be able to understand the rules!
>
> I'm a bit concerned that it's not a straightforward process to
> determine where a package goes. One cannot find, for example,
> whether a package goes in main simply by looking at the section
> describing the main distribution (it might be shareware, for
> example, and it's necessary to read the section on the contrib
> distribution to find that shareware is excluded from main.
No, sharewere is excluded from main because it doens't follow the
Debain Free Software guidelines (quoting from the main stuff:)
1.Free Redistribution
The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from
selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate
software distribution containing programs from several different
sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
Obviously, shareware restricts selling/giving away (it restricts
it to a certain period of time or whatever), so only by looking at
"main", you (or at least I did) can see that a shareware packagre
cannot go into main.
It is true, however that it is impossible to see whether a "free"
non-us package can go into the Main distribution.
Personally, I think it's a bit self-centered thinking of the
US-debianers to exportability from the US such a central issue
in determining wheter something can go into main or not. It'd
be much better to have a "Main" archive that includes the non-us
stuff, and provide an easy method for mirror administrators
to "ln -s export-restriction-README $filename" the files that
cannot be exported from that local mirror. That way, if the
Dutch gouverment is going to prohibit exportation of compilers,
and the French gouverment prohibits exportation of editors[1],
we will be ready[2] for that.
[1] No, I know of no plans of eighter the Dutch or French gouverments
that would ban any of these. But both at some stage have intended
to introduce crypto-laws, and those laws may then be sligtly different
from the US ones, possibly incling software that previously had no
export restrictions. Would we then change the guidelines
to include the Dutch export restricitons, reducing the size of Main
again?
[2] Well, the mirror-structures would be ready. The mirroring itself
will be somewhat more difficult, but as long as there is one country
where everything is exportable, that shouldn't be too much of a
problem.
--
joost witteveen, joostje@debian.org
#!/usr/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
#what's this? see http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/
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