Re: Policy on Binary Firmware Fetching in Main (e.g. foo2zjs)

[Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT>]

michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com wrote:

>> No, it's a very different case since here we have a large free
>> self-contained free software program which works without any non-free
>> dependencies, whose package also contains an additional little script
>> which downloads and copies to an external device some file.
>> There is clearly no dependency here.
>a large number of printers will not work without getweb, which is a part 
>of the foo2zjs package.  hence, there is significant loss of 
>functionality without getweb and the external files that it downloads. 
You are missing the point: some printers may or may not work, but the
program itself still has the same capabilities and is not influenced by
what getweb does.

>and since getweb depends on non-free software and is a part of the 
>package, foo2zjs as a whole is considered to depend on non-free software.
No. getweb *downloads* and copies some non-free software, it does not
depend on it.

>this could easily be remedied by splitting getweb out of foo2zjs.
Or not, since there is no reason to do it.

>if a package has a bit non-free documentation in it, then the entire 
>package cannot be in main.  the conclusion should be the same here. 
>there is certainly a dependency here as argued above.
There is no dependency and we are talking about an installer (which is
contrib material, not non-free material) which is only an additional
component of the whole package. It is a completely different case.

-- 
ciao,
Marco