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Re: Bug#285518: misdn-utils includes a firmware loader



Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@hogyros.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
[quoting Josh Triplett]

>> Package: misdn-utils
>> Version: 0.0.0+cvs20041018-4
>> Severity: serious
>
>> misdn-utils contains a utility "loadfirm", for loading firmware onto
>> ISDN devices.  Unless this firmware is Free Software with source, which
>> did not appear to be the case after a large amount of searching, this
>> utility should not be in Debian main.

In what respect is a utility to upload data (which are probably
non-free) to a hardware device different from, for example,
pybliographer?  Pybliographer contains functionality to download data
from PubMed, a free-as-in-beer literature database? What about a program
that is designed to do uploads to the PDB, a free-as-in-beer scientific
database of protein structures? All the data handled by these programs
are non-free (because modification of scientific information is
generally not acceptable, and usage is often restricted).

By the way, what about ftp, a program designed to upload arbitrary data
- often non-free files - to a hardware device via a protocol based on
TCP/IP? 

Regards, Frank

P.S. Shouldn't this be moved to -legal?
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer



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