Re: LCC and blobs
On Sun, Dec 26, 2004 at 09:22:42PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:
> > I think there are parallels with other software in Debian where we have
> > not been so forgiving. We have a number of emulators for game consoles
> > that are packaged and currently living in contrib eg uae, atari800.
> > Those are generally placed in contrib because there's currently no free
> > replacement for the ROMs they require.
>
> That seems comparable to Perl or any other interpreter: to be shipped
> in Free, at least one free program must exist. If such exist for the
> Atari 800 or whatever UAE emulates, then surely they can be moved to free.
Yes, of course. So, we could technically distribute ROMs for atari800 if
we found some that met the DFSG, and then we could move atari800 to
main. We could technically distribute an ICQ server if we had one that
met the DFSG, but we already distribute the client in main. Why?
To tell the truth I've forgotten how this relates to the original topic.
> Such a CD-ROM is useful only by extracting software from it. This is
> very different from a typical hardware device, which is there for
> functionality. Sure, you could look at CDs or ROM chips as hardware,
> but they are methods of software transport. A video card is not,
> typically, such a method.
OK, though in http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/12/msg02153.html
you said thet the contents of EEPROMs were not software.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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