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Re: Bug#353277: ndiswrapper in main



>>>>> "Eduard" == Eduard Bloch <edi@gmx.de> writes:

    Eduard> And I have never understood why the apt-setup questions
    Eduard> for contrib and non-free have been put into the same
    Eduard> dialog. The only possible reason is that the users that
    Eduard> have deliberately decided to not use non-free software
    Eduard> (because of "political" reasons) should never come in
    Eduard> touch with it and therefore all possible ways that may
    Eduard> lead to the "dark side" should be hidden. OTOH the last
    Eduard> action is already a kind of limiting the freedom of
    Eduard> choice. And if not (eg. is explained as something else,
    Eduard> political correctness or whatever) then it still means
    Eduard> making life or users harder and is a violation of
    Eduard> DSFG. Pushing users for ideological reasons sucks.

I believe installer packages for non-free software still go in
contrib, because they are considered GPL compliant. So if you want to
be sure you won't accidently get confused with non-free software (I
have done so from time to time), this can be achieved by eliminating
all non-free software from the search results produced by "apt-cache
search". This requires eliminating contrib as well as nonfree.

Example, in sarge: flashplugin-nonfree and quake2-data is in contrib.

There are also other suspicious packages in sarge maintained by the GA
group, eg. acl-installer, and int-fiction-installer.

I think these should belong in a separate category then ndiswrapper,
because, unlike ndiswrapper, they are not even "complete" packages
without non-free software, and this will never change for the lifetime
of the installer package. On the other hand, the possibility exists
that somebody is using ndiswrapper, either now or in the future with
entirely DFSG software.

Even if nobody does this, it is still possible to integrate
ndiswrapper with free software (such as debian-installer)[1]. The same
thing cannot be said (IMHO) for an installer package.

Whether this means ndiswrapper should go in main, flashplugin-nonfree
should go in non-free, or some other solution, I am undecided.


Note:

[1] One way, I think, of looking at ndiswrapper is that it is a set of
DFSG hooks to allow integration with add-on nonfree software. I
believe there are similar hooks in the Linux kernel. Some of these
hooks can only be used by non-free software (e.g. uploading of nonfree
firmware). This doesn't make the kernel contrib.

Why should it be any different if you split the hooks out into a
separate user space and separate kernel space package? Would kernel
code for uploading firmware suddenly become contrib if you split it
out from the kernel source and made it a compilable module? Why
so/not?

Would the situation be any different if there was a package in main
that depended on ndiswrapper-utils, but made use of such non-free
drivers optional? If ndiswrapper moved to contrib would this package
have to move to?

I am not providing an opinion here, but I didn't notice these issues
being discussed earlier.


back to your regular program...
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>



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