Re: Are DFSG free package in non-us part of Debian?

[Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>]

James Troup <james@nocrew.org> writes:

> Hello?  Can we please limit this discussion to reality, and not what
> might be going on in an alternate reality?  master.debian.org *is* the
> location of main and it *is* in the USA; it's been this way for years
> now and is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
> 
> I don't care what you want to call main, but I define main as
> debian/dists/{unstable,frozen,stable}/main/.

(James, this is *not* targetted directly at you, but you provided an
appropriate opening for me to speak my peace on the issue...)

Hmm, I'd be happy to see a

  ftp.nonus.debian.org/pub/debian/non-US/dists/{unstable,frozen,stable}/main/.
  ftp.nonfr.debian.org/pub/debian/non-FR/dists/{unstable,frozen,stable}/main/.

and perhaps eventually a 

  ftp.nonde.debian.org/pub/debian/non-DE/dists/{unstable,frozen,stable}/main/.

for some DFSG quake replacement and other software.[1]   To me "main"
implies "that which satisfies the DFSG", and *nothing* more.

The rest of this entire thread is just missing the point as far as I'm
concerned.  National laws have *nothing* to do with what we as a
project consider idealogically correct.

If the US told us tomorrow that all non-commercial "ip-phone" software
was illegal (because they were trying to protect the phone lobbies or
something), then we'd have a *technical* problem of where to move that
software, but certainly not an intellectual problem of whether or not
we still considered that software suitable for Debian.

The *only* thing worth discussing here is how we want to address the
*technical* problem of accomodating annoying laws (in whatever
country).  Right now we have a very crude, US-centric, but mostly
effective approach.  If we can do better, and someone is willing to do
the work, great.

I'd love to hear better *solutions* to the problem, but not these
endless discussions (mostly at cross-purposes) that seem to be missing
the point (IMO)...

[1] maybe we could use the package "keyword" and "package-pool" ideas
along with apt's multiple sources to do something even fancier.  If
dinstall is also smart enough to read the keywords (like non-us,
non-de, etc.) and it is deployed at some set of upload queues in
various countries, then we might be set.  People just upload to a
queue that they know it's legal for them to upload to, and dinstall
makes sure the files don't go anywhere they're not supposed to.  This
would, of course, require major changes to our infrastructure, so I'm
mostly just speculating...

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930