Are Web-API packages need to be in the 'main' repo ?
Hello Debian People !
Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) ships packages [2] that integrate with web services
(called in modern term 'Cloud Computing' or SaaS,
'Software-as-a-Service' if you will), such as the Facebook API.
What if Facebook decides to close down it's APIs tomorrow ?
Will Debian drop those packages from 6.0-stable release ?
I'm not saying such packages must not exist in Debian. They should.
But (!) those packages interface non-free web services, which is
politically no different than non-free software. Technically even
worse, because web-software is likely to break at any moment, change
APIs, or close down free access to it, and demand either NDA contracts
or fee-based licensing.
Perhaps they should be moved to 'contrib' category, because they
interface non-free web-services. Debian's 'main' repository seems not
the right place for any such web APIs.
[1] Debian project clarifies the diff. between 'main' and 'contrib' here:
http://www.isotton.com/software/debian/docs/repository-howto/repository-howto.html
[2] "grep -i facebook" on the package list
(http://packages.debian.org/stable/allpackages?format=txt.gz)
What's your opinion ?
--
-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"
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