On Mon, 2003-09-01 at 23:40, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > On 31 Aug 2003 17:51:42 +0200, Mathieu Roy <yeupou@gnu.org> said: > > > But now we're discussing about it and I express my opinion: since > > these packages in their postinst script install non-free stuff, I > > think that even if there's no non-free stuff within the packages > > themselves, the result of the installation of these packages (and > > not their dependancies!) is to get non-free stuff. And so, it leads > > me to the conclusion that, whatever the fact that the non-free part > > is downloaded at the same time than the debian package or not, this > > package itself contains non-free stuff. > > This is no different from any package in contrib that actually > depends on non-free software. You seem to be implying that contrib is > only supposed to be composed of software that may build depend on > non-free packages, but may not depend on, or install, non-free > packages. Really? I read it as a request to be honest about the program's intentions. When you install a program from contrib that depends on something in non-free, you're clearly installing something in non-free (vrms will recognize it, dselect will say that it's non-free, and so on), in addition to the thing in contrib. Also, the thing in contrib is suppossedly a useful piece of almost-free software, that happens to use a non-free toolkit, compression library, or whatever. You may be installing it to rewrite that part, for example. The installer packages aren't recognized as non-free by vrms or dselect, and I would question the copyrightability of the installer (is a wget/dpkg line copyrightable? I doubt it). Furthermore, the installer is totally useless for doing anything but writing another non-free installer, since it's so trivial. There is no reason to install the installer unless you plan to install and use the non-free software. -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
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