Marco d'Itri wrote: > bts@alum.mit.edu wrote: >>>Right, the package in main should not depend on an hypothetical package >>>from non-free. >> >>So rather than ship the driver in contrib and the firmware in >>non-free, you're suggesting that the driver go in main and the >>firmware not be shipped at all, even though that reduces the >>functionality of the driver to "Error: no firmware found." > > Yes. I believe that this better serves our users. I can think about at > least two common situations in which an hard dependency would not be > appropriate or even possible: First of all, the hard dependency is clearly there; otherwise, the package in contrib would not need Depends: firmware-package-in-non-free. It would have a Recommends, or even a Suggests; in the latter case, if the dependency is so weak that it is merely a suggesion, the package could go in main. > - when distribution is restricted by copyright, so we cannot distribute > it even in non-free (usually when the driver has been developed from > scratch by a third party) This is irrelevant to whether the package goes in contrib or not; either it Depends: non-free-package , or it Depends-but-we-can't-express-it: package-we-can't-distribute . Either way, it should go to contrib. > - when the firmware is used by a device needed to install the system, > like a network card or a modem (if the user has got the Debian system > on a CD it may be easier for him to get the firmware from the vendor > CD than downloading it and the transfering it to the target system > using some removable media) And this is absolutely irrelevant to whether a package goes in main or contrib. >>That seems as clear a dependence as any other foo and foo-data package >>in the repository. > > Probably because you did not think much about real-life issues... None of which are relevant to whether a package goes in main or contrib. If you want to argue that a package in contrib should be included on CDs or in the installer, feel free to argue that. Please do not conflate that issue with the entirely non-technical decision of whether a package goes in main or contrib; otherwise, you are doing a disservice to another important class of users, namely those who count on Debian to be true to its stated values and keep the clear distinction between main, contrib, and non-free. - Josh Triplett
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