Re: ITP seahorse
On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 03:41:51AM -0600, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Consistency is not and end in itself. In many cases, of course, it
> benefits the users in various ways, and then it is virtuous--but
> indirectly so. But sometimes that is not the case.
>
> People are mentioning a non-US/main category. That seems like the
> best place for this program. Isn't the other program it refers to in
> non-US/main?
Yes, the program is a shell for GnuPG, which is in non-US/main..
Traditionally, programs which didn't meet the requirements for placement
into non-US were placed into contrib or non-free, as their DFSG freeness
allowed. The programs in contrib are all free according to the DFSG but
depend on things not in main.
The issue is that now we have a seperate distinction for main vs contrib
or non-free in the non-US section, and some of us think that packages
formerly in contrib for the sole reason that they depend on software in
non-US be moved there, especially if the programs are in non-US/main.
The pro is that the software is not intermixed with other software in
contrib which some consider "contaminated" by some form of non-freeness
(which is indeed not always the case as is clearly demonstrated here).
The con is that while we distribute the software in contrib on our
official CD sets, we do not distribute any part of non-US on these sets
because of stupidity in the US legal system.
The software in contrib is shipped with the big disclaimer that this
section depends on things not in Debian and is provided as a convenience
only - you'll have to get other things from other sources (non-US,
non-free, or possibly some other site if the thing is an installer for
some foriegn package (usually non-free enough we can't repackage it such
as realplayer..) Other candidates for contrib have included emulators
which require rom image dumps which are not freely distributable and games
such as DOOM and Quake whose engines are GPL but whose game data are not.
(though a completely off-topic plug, we're working on a free dataset for
Quake so it may hopefully soon move to main, but I've talked to you about
that before I think..)
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> GnuPG key 1024D/DCF9DAB3
Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/) 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC
The QuakeForge Project (http://quakeforge.net/) 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3
<devkev> yeah i saw the lightning gun and where you were going, thinking
you were gonna kick some ass :)
<devkev> didnt realise it would be your own :)
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