Re: Question about the criteria for a library to be in contrib

[Hendrik Weimer <hendrik@enyo.de>]

Michael Wild <themiwi@gmail.com> writes:

> On 04/05/2011 03:23 AM, Hendrik Weimer wrote:
>> Michael Wild <themiwi@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>>> I find this hard to believe, since the package only uses the free
>>> and publicly available API defined by the Khronos group and it is
>>> up to the user of the package against which implementation of
>>> OpenCL he wishes to link.
>> 
>> How is this different from Java before OpenJDK was released?
>
> I think it is different because the package will only contain source
> code. It hasn't been processed by or linked against any proprietary,
> non-free software. Of course, one could argue that it is implicitly tied
> to non-free software since there is currently no alternative. So, for
> me, this is kind of a conundrum :-)

The question is whether one can use ViennaCL without an OpenCL
implementation. If not, then the ViennaCL package must depend on an
OpenCL package, no matter whether it is source code only or not.

> BTW, there is a free implementation of OpenCL in the works in Mesa,
> called Clover [1]. However, I'm not sure how far along it is and how
> active it is, the last commit is from late November, last year.

If Clover gets packaged and you can use ViennaCL with it, I see no
problem for the latter to go into main.

Hendrik