Re: KDE

[Jonathan P Tomer <phouchg@cif.rochester.edu>]

> What if we forbade "official" CD's from having any contrib/non-free
> on them?  I.e., you could buy the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, which 
> might be two CD's -- main-binary and main-source.  Then you could
> purchase contrib/non-free CD's as separate entities.  They would
> really only be "purchasable" for the convenience of the user (i.e., to 
> avoid mega downloads).
> 
> I don't think this would really harm anyone -- the only thing in
> non-free I use ATM is Netscape.

remember, contrib stuff is dfsg-free.
i see no point in making contrib any less accessible or less part of debian.
the policy says that contrib also includes those things considered too buggy
for support, but in practice all that ever gets in there are packages that
depend on non-main packages. perhaps restricting non-free things from
officialdom would be wise but restricting contrib is not fair to the authors
of contrib software, who did nothing wrong except use non-free development
tools which might well not be available elsewhere, (eg xforms).
furthermore there is contrib stuff that depends only on non-*us* -- not
non-free -- packages, and really is free.

--p.