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Re: pine (was: Re: debian-faq: patch5 to remove some outdated content)



Per notable examples, I would also mention the broadcom-sta driver (non-free, but available as source code, pulled from upstream [Broadcom]) and the Adobe Flash plugin (non-free and only available as binary 'blob', pulled from upstream [Adobe]).

Broadcom wireless adapters are popular and Flash is still being used in combination with Firefox/Iceweasel.

Would those be OK?

~Andy Mender

On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 8:44 PM, Holger Wansing <linux@wansing-online.de> wrote:
Hi,

Hendrik Boom <hendrik@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 07, 2016 at 09:45:43PM +0200, Holger Wansing wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Justin B Rye <justin.byam.rye@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Joost van Baal-Ilić wrote:
> > > > Holger Wansing wrote:
> > > >>        <p>Some packages are only distributed as source code due to the restrictions
> > > >>        in their licenses. Notably, one such package is <tt>pine</tt>, see
> > > >>        <ref id="pine"> for more information.
> > > >>
> > > >> So if we remove pine from the doc, we need another example for such
> > > >> nonfree software, which is only allowed to be distributed as source code.
> > > >> Is anyone aware of such software?
> > > >
> > > > publicfile.  There is https://packages.debian.org/publicfile-installer .
> > >
> > > Except that publicfile isn't an example "only distributed as source
> > > code".  Debian doesn't distribute even that much - instead the
> > > installer package *fetches* that code from upstream.
> >
> > Hmm, if there are only few of such packages, that topic is probably not
> > worth a frequently asked question (FAQ)?
> > So skip the whole sentence?
>
> Isn't one of those packages nvidia's own drivers?  That is, at least,
> an important one, and may be worth a mention.

That's mostly covered by the next sentence, I think:

<p>Source code may or may not be available for packages in the "contrib"
and "non-free" directories, which are not formally part of the Debian system.



We could enhance that a bit, maybe:

  <p>Due to restrictions in their licenses
  source code may or may not be available for packages in the "contrib"
  and "non-free" directories, which are not formally part of the Debian system.
  Notable examples for this are <tt>nvidia-*</tt> driver packages.

Does such text fit for the nvidia drivers packages?



Holger


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