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Re: Summary of the DebConf firmware discussion



Hi,

Quoting Bas Wijnen (2015-08-29 16:36:03)
> On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 03:54:56PM +0200, Jan Hauke Rahm wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 01:15:21PM +0200, Paul Wise wrote:
> > > non-free/docs
> > > non-free/firmware
> > > non-free/drivers
> > > non-free/web
> > > non-free/comm
> > > non-free/formats
> > > non-free/apps
> > 
> > I don't care much for making this more complicated, but splitting
> > non-free may find many (even reasonable) metrics to do so.
> 
> What you're describing is debtags.  For users who want that sort of control, it
> may be useful to add functionality to apt to hide packages that match some rule
> involving debtags.  It will download the full package list, but it only
> presents what the user chose to see.
>
> [...]
> > Think of some package with a non-commercial clause in its otherwise free
> > license. Many of our users are non-commercial and could use
> > non-free/non-commercial.  Or think of those non-military/non-evil licenses
> > which (almost) any private citizen and even many companies could use.
> 
> Everything in non-free can be used by people, otherwise we couldn't distribute
> it.  If people want to only not use things they aren't allowed to use, they
> should enable all of non-free and read the licenses.

as far as I understand it, the problem that a splitting of non-free is supposed
to solve is that users might want non-free firmware but want to avoid
accidentally installing any other package from non-free.

While creating a non-free/firmware area will certainly solve this particular
problem, maybe there is a solution which will solve even more similar problems
in an even better way?

Allowing apt to pin (or otherwise filter) packages using debtags, for example,
sounds like a solution that would solve this problem while at the same time
allowing a wide range of other uses as well.

Wrt licenses, maybe packages using machine readable d/copyright could gain a
automatically generated field that would allow apt to pin (or otherwise filter)
packages by license? That way people could enable non-free but limit it to
Creative Commons packages or GDFL packages - or whatever other license they
find okay even though the DFSG does not.

cheers, josch

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