Re: Bug#353277: ndiswrapper in main

[Micha Lenk <micha@debian.lenk.info>]

Hello,

Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> Please, can we answer the question?  If it's not useful then say,
> "Yes, it's not useful, but that's not relevant."  If it's useful say,
> "It's useful, which should settle the case."
> 
> Instead, I hear, "Nyaa nyaa nyaa, I'm not goiny to say whether it's
> useful."

My impression is that the question you're asking is not that easy to answer
with yes or no - neither in general nor in this special case. I assume you
agree that the answer strongly depends on the purpose ndiswrapper is
intended to use for. There is the one position saying, yes ndiswrapper is
useful and the other saying that it's not. Both positions where supported
with arguments and are IMHO *both* eligible. IMHO Henning Makholm did
fairly well describe the essential traits of both positions
(<871wxn6yhr.fsf@kreon.lan.henning.makholm.net>).

I think it's a question of respecting the opinion of others, of accepting
that others say "No, ndiswrapper isn't useful. It should go into contrib"
whereas yourself may think it's useful (independent of it's suitability).
And experiencing the nice diversity of opinions in this thread I can't say
at all whether it is usefull or not without offending other's opinions.
Beside the discussion whether your question is relevant at all for the
decision this is perhaps a reason why you get an indifferent answer "Nyaa
nyaa nyaa, I'm not going to say whether it's usefull."

You just can't imagine all possibile applications Debian might be used for -
at least I can't (and don't aim to do so). That's why I can't simply say
it's useless or not.


I am not a Debian developer, but isn't the conflict itself in this thread an
argument why you shouldn't consider the criterion of usefulness *at* *all*
when deciding about putting a package in main or contrib? To find a
consensus about the usefulness of a package is IMHO potentially far to
oppositely charged. I wouldn't burden the developers to discuss such
tedious questions over and over again in order to decide whether a package
belongs into main or contrib.

IMHO clearly technical criteria are instead more adequate to decide such
questions, as suggested by Henning Makholm
(<871wxn6yhr.fsf@kreon.lan.henning.makholm.net>).

Regards
  Micha