Re: contrib or main?
On Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 05:20:41PM -0500, Joe Smith wrote:
> >Shouldn't packages that require something outside the archive, be it
> >free or not, be in contrib?
>
> No. An emulator does not require a game. It is just not particularly useful
> without one.
What do you suppose "require" refers to, in "require the use of" (SC#1), if
not "require the use of [in order to be useful]"?
We've had this argument before. Someone claimed that drivers that require
non-free firmware blobs should be allowed in main, saying things like "it
might be used to recreate the blob!" and "the driver still works without
it, it just exits with an error code!"
It can be applied to just about anything in contrib: "an application that is
nonfunctional without a non-free library doesn't require it, it's just not
very useful without it"; "a Java application doesn't require a JRE, it's
just not very useful without one". It's an argument for abolishing contrib
and merging it with main, saying "nothing really requires anything else".
--
Glenn Maynard
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