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Re: NF Compromise - Alternatives Nagging + planned removal date warning



Anthony DeRobertis writes:
> On Wednesday, November 20, 2002, at 03:12 AM, Derek Gladding wrote:

>> You could also add a message that comes up on first install (not
>> necessarily every upgrade) that reads something like:

> That text would much better go with the dialog from apt-config asking
> if you want to use non-free or not.

It seems there are two locations where you could reasonably put a
message:

- One from apt-config syaing something like "As a courtesy to their
  users, the developers of Debian make a number of packages available
  that are not part of the Debian distribution..."  (and so on).

- For each non-free package, it would be reasonable to first display
  its license with an <agree> / <disagree> button pair.

It would make sense to redisplay this if
- the license changes
- a major upgrade takes place and alternative packages have become
  available.
The license should probably not be redisplayed for minor upgrades.

The point of this would be to stress the difference between Debian,
where you know that the license is DFSG-compliant as opposed to
contributed packages where the license imposes limitations.


Looking again, it does really seem to me that confusion that contrib
and non-free are part of debian is to some extent engendered by the
layout of the archives: /debian/dists/potato/{main,contrib,non-free}
strongly implies that contrib and non-free are part of potato as
opposed to compatible with/tested against potato.

As a mere user of debian, I'd like to stress (again) that I would
regret non-free (and possibly contrib) simply going away.  It also
raises my hackles that the motivation appears to ideological purity,
manifesting as a desire to make the installation and use of non-free
software gratuitously difficult.  This as opposed to a desire to just
make the best distribution around (with its DFSG-compliance being one
of the bits that make it the best).  (Note that I'm not claiming that
this is the driving motivation, just that the various proponents have
managed to make it look like that to me.)

On another note: it would be nice if there was a good/convenient way
to find non-debian-the-project-distributed .debs, again regardless of
whether they're DFSG-compliant or not.  Easy availability of software
for systems running Debian is a good thing, even when the software
doesn't make the cut for being part of Debian.

I see I'm starting to rant, so I'll just shut up now.

-- 
Olaf Weber

               (This space left blank for technical reasons.)



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