Re: Proposal - Deferment of Changes from GR 2004-003

[Andreas Barth <aba@not.so.argh.org>]

* Wouter Verhelst (wouter@grep.be) [040430 08:25]:
> On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 10:06:58PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > I don't think this is right.  If there is no dependency, the thing
> > doesn't have to be in contrib.
> > 
> > Remember, a thing goes in contrib because it is only useful with
> > something in non-free.  But a driver is useful for both the
> > proprietary firmware and any free firmware that should arise.  Even
> > though the possibility of the latter is remote, I don't think it's so
> > remote that it means the thing should go in contrib.
 
> That doesn't matter. To date, the policy has always been that a package
> must go in contrib if it has a dependency on something in non-free which
> has no *current* free implementation. This makes a lot of sense; after
> all, non-free is just software, so you could theoretically rewrite
> everything in there, including libraries, firmware, and whatnot. If it
> were accepted that a hypothetically (though nonexisting) free
> implementation is enough to warrant moving a package from contrib to
> main, why should we still have contrib at all?

I don't seperate contrib and main via non-free. Just the other way:
Software in main needs to be DFSG-free, and also all dependencies must
be fulfiled in main (so that main is a closure).

There could be failures to fullfill this conditions in two ways:
Failing freeness, and failing the dependencies. That leads to:

                          free          not free(*)
dependencies ok           main          non-free
dependencies failed      contrib        non-free

(with "free" is defined as "fulfills the DFSG", "not free" is defined
as "anything that is not free", "dependencies ok" is defined as "can
work with only software that actually is in main", and "dependencies
failed" is defined as "anything that is not dependencies ok".)

(*) actually, non-free falls into two categorys: distributable and not
legally distributable, and the second subcategory is not distributed
at all.


Cheers,
Andi
-- 
   http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/
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