On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 11:56:53AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli writes ("Re: Minified javascript files"):
> > The problem I see with it, is that it adds complexity to the judgement
> > of whether something is suitable for a source package or not (on all
> > actors involved: maintainer, ftp-masters, QA, bug reporters, etc.). With
> > something like that we'll have 3 cases:
> >
> > - DFSG-free source[1] -> stay in the tarball, not hidden
> > - non DFSG-free "binary" -> must be removed, via repacking
> > - "binary" generated from DFSG-free source available elsewhere in the
> > archive -> stay in the tarball, hidden at the dpkg-source level
>
> That's not what I was proposing. I was proposing that we would treat
> your 2nd and 3rd points identically. They would then be in our
> archive in the .orig.tar.gz files.
Right, that's, strictly speaking, not what you proposed. But it seems to
me that to support the argument "it's not SC violation because the
source is available in a different package", you do need to perform such
a distinction.
Anyway, the most important part seems to be your ideological[1]
question:
> If this is not ideologically[1] acceptable
The point here is whether having non-free material, which is in
distributed tarballs but hidden by dpkg-source, would constitute
inclusion of non-free material in what we call Debian. (Of course we're
talking about "main" here.)
Personally, I wouldn't consider that acceptable.
Even if I were ready to accept the idea that "hidden for any reasonable
purpose" non-free material could be part of Debian tarballs (and I'm
not), I wouldn't consider dpkg-source hiding good enough. The reason is
that what to do with a .orig.tar.gz file --- invoking dpkg-source on it
--- is obvious to anyone with Debian knowledge, but it is obscure to
anyone else. A random *nix user with no Debian knowledge would just open
it up, find non-free material, and be induced to conclude that it is
part of Debian.
For DFSG-related purposes dpkg-source hiding is just not enough, IMO.
(Thought it'd still be fine for the 3rd case above.)
Cheers.
[1] same footnote of yours:
> [1] NB I do not mean to use "ideological" in a pejorative way. I am
> very comfortable with the idea that Debian might make decisions based
> on ideology. The root question being discussed here is IMO
> essentially ideological.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
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