Re: pine (was: Re: debian-faq: patch5 to remove some outdated content)
Holger Wansing wrote:
> <p>Due to restrictions in their licenses source code may or may not
^
Here I'd suggest adding a comma.
> 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,
^
On the other hand you need to drop this comma, or simplify to
something like
For some packages, the source code is available, but [...]
> but not distributable via the Debian archive, so it has to be pulled
> from the site of the origin author or company when installing.
That's "original author", and of course it might be coming from
whoever's taken over maintenance, so you might as well just say
"upstream". This also slightly obscures the fact that you don't get
to just do a normal binary-package install.
from upstream and built locally.
> Examples for this case are the <tt>broadcom-sta-*</tt> packages, a
> driver for Broadcom wireless adapters.
Singular/plural problems. Also, as far as I can see broadcom-sta-dkms
*isn't* an example of a package where you have to pull it from
upstream - the source code is included in the package distributed in
non-free, so it's a direct equivalent of pine.
> Moreover to this, the source code might not be available at all
^^^^^^^
Moreover is a standalone adverb, not a preposition - drop "to this".
(Or if we're dropping the previous example, further rewording is
required.)
> and only a binary "blob" is distributed by the origin company.
You've drifted from "might be" to "is"; the easiest fix would be to
avoid having a second verb.
"Binary blob" probably needs quotes around the whole phrase (though
the term's standard enough for wikipedia).
Again, "origin(al) company" -> "upstream".
Putting it all together:
For other packages, the source code might not be available at
all, with only a "binary blob" distributed by upstream.
> A notable example for this is the Adobe Flash plugin in the
> <tt>flashplugin-nonfree</tt> package.
I'm not entirely convinced this is going to stay notable, given that
Mozilla and Google are deprecating it. And it's an example where
*neither* source code *nor* compiled binary is in the repositories.
Is that what we want an example of? I'd have thought we wanted one
case of "binaries but no source" and one of "source but no binaries".
> Comments?
>
> Maybe from Justin regarding the grammar? ;-)
Couldn't we go back to something closer to what's currently there?
Instead of one paragraphs about Pine and then another about
contrib/non-free (which seems like the wrong order anyway), we could
have one that says:
6.9 Where is the source code?
[...]
Due to restrictions in their licenses, source code may or may not
be available for packages in the "contrib" and "non-free" areas,
which are not formally part of the Debian system. In some cases
only sourceless "binary blobs" can be distributed (see for instance
firmware-misc-nonfree); in others cases the license prohibits the
distribution of prebuilt binaries, but does allow packages of
source code which users can compile locally (see broadcom-sta-dkms).
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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