Re: pine (was: Re: debian-faq: patch5 to remove some outdated content)
Hi,
Andrzej Bylicki <anpaby5@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?
It might be useful, to document these two szenarios, so here we go:
<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.
There are some packages, for which the source code is available,
but not distributable via the Debian archive, so it has to be pulled
from the site of the origin author or company when installing.
Examples for this case are the <tt>broadcom-sta-*</tt> packages, a
driver for Broadcom wireless adapters.
Moreover to this, the source code might not be available at all
and only a binary "blob" is distributed by the origin company.
A notable example for this is the Adobe Flash plugin in the
<tt>flashplugin-nonfree</tt> package.
Comments?
Maybe from Justin regarding the grammar? ;-)
Holger
> ~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?
> >
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