Re: potential MBF: first alternate depends not available in main
On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 09:58:02AM -0500, Mike O'Connor wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2011 09:41:00 -0500, Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, March 02, 2011 04:53:46 am Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote:
>
> > > If you have non-free enabled and install a package from main, it should
> > > install the dependencies from main. So you should have e.g. "rar |
> > > rar-nonfree" instead of the other way round.
> >
> > Why? If the user has made the choice to use non-free and the maintainer
> > concludes that's a more technically capable solution for users that choose to
> > use it, why should the project raise barriers to that choice?
>
> To me, this particualar case is one where we should definitely not be
> choosing a non-free version by default, as using the non-free version
> actually puts a financial burden on the user. Just becaause the user
> decided that he wants to enable non-free so he can install sun-java6,
> doesn't mean we should assume he is willing to buy a license for rar.
Uhm? What choice are you talking about?
There are three packages:
rar (the compressor)
unrar
unrar-free
The compressor comes with a 40 days "test" license and request payment after
that period. Of course, in practice no one pays -- home users just ignore
it, those for whom legality matters usually choice other compressors.
On Debian, there is hardly every any reason to use rar, so any dependencies
on it should probably be avoided.
The two decompressors:
"unrar-free" is useless for anything but unpacking some historical archives.
You'd have to dig deep to find any it can actually handle. Depending or
recommending it is thus pointless.
"unrar" is what you need to unpack anything you can get today. Sadly,
thanks to people ignoring the compressor's cost this format remains pretty
popular and many tools depend/recommend/suggest unrar for a good reason.
Too bad, I'm afraid that any recommendation for unrar-free is a bug since it
does nothing good for the user and causes confusion. For example for .cbr,
no files are compressed using rar2 as that format is newer than rar3.
--
1KB // Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
// Never attribute to stupidity what can be
// adequately explained by malice.
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