Re: The 30 most popular packages missing in Debian

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Franklin PIAT <fpiat@bigfoot.com> writes:

> Also It's important that we can tell our users "Debian 4.0, as of
> 2008-01-31 has flashplugin-nonfree version X.Y, skype version Z.Y"

That will never be true as long as those works are non-free. Debian
has no non-free software (and if it does, that's a bug to be
corrected).

Some non-free works are distributed via Debian's infrastructure, but
it's very important to *not* have "Debian includes non-free work
$FOO" be true, because that's against the entire point of Debian.

> and provide all the QA associated (BTS, security tracking...).

For most non-free software, we *can't* provide all the QA associated
with Debian. For most of them we are prohibited from redistribution of
modified versions, so security updates cannot be provided the same way
as software that is part of Debian; we have to wait for updates from
the original vendor.

-- 
 \           "For fast acting relief, try slowing down." —Jane Wagner, |
  `\                                                   via Lily Tomlin |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney