Re: potential MBF: first alternate depends not available in main

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Mike O'Connor <stew@debian.org> writes:

> 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.

I wonder what the default behaviour would be if you pin non-free below
main. Would apt/aptitude/... then prefer the main alternatives because
of the higher pin?

MfG
        Goswin