On Sat, Jun 19, 2004 at 06:47:53PM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote: > On Sat, 2004-06-19 at 18:17, Benjamin Cutler wrote: > > > Perhaps my choice of words was poor, but I think that emulators fall > > into their own class of software because they rely on what is generally > > commercial, non-free (and honestly, quite probably illegal) software in > > order to run, which is why they fall into contrib. > > I guess I'm just not sure I buy that an emulator is materially different > from a script interpreter, DFSG-wise. > > A quick 'apt-cache search emulator' turns up quite a few emulators in > main. I can find a few that don't have supported programs in main -- > mixal would be one. B-) I put xtrs in contrib because without the ROM (or a DFSG-free OS for the TRS-80 Model 4P, which doesn't exist or at the very least isn't packaged), the only thing it will do is display an error message that no ROM was found. My thinking is that we need to not be pulling any bait-and-switches on our users. If I were to "apt-get install xtrs" from main, I'd expect it to do something more than throw up an error message. In summary, the decision to put emulators that are largely or completely inoperable without supplementary materials (from non-free, or not provided by Debian at all), is not wholly compelled by the "100% Free Software" portion of the Social Contract. It's also motivated by the "We will be guided by the needs of our users" part. -- G. Branden Robinson | Men use thought only to justify Debian GNU/Linux | their wrong doings, and speech only branden@debian.org | to conceal their thoughts. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Voltaire
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