Re: Missing source in firefox-esr: EME module
My goals in posting were to drum up support, or at least to figure out what other people think about the issue.
My hope was that people who care about free licensing would be subscribed to debian-legal, and that at least some people would immediately be interested in / worried about the problem.
To me, what the firefox package is doing seems like a loophole that allows nearly arbitrary proprietary software to be packaged in "main", functionally indistinguishable from including the old flashplugin-nonfree in main and having Firefox depend on it. Another decent example would be if someone made a version of DOOM that shipped with free assets but had a "buy the official DOOM levels for $5" button.
My second goal has been accomplished: It looks like not everyone immediately sees it like that.
> Namely, you have failed to appreciate that this is a *political*
> problem. It needs a political solution. You will not get this
> problem fixed by simply stating your opinion, and your reasons, on
> this list (on in bug reports).
It doesn't look like we're at the fixing stage on this one. I haven't even managed to get one person to agree with me as to what the problem is.
I guess my most useful question as this point is this: There's not a lot of interest in this issue here on debian-legal. Is there another place where there would be more interest?
> > Your proposal of simply changing the text is effectively trying to convert DRM *into* an addon.
>
> I can definitely see that way of looking at it. To my mind it would
> make the problem less severe.
>
> > I don't think it's appropriate to start by simply changing the messages since that doesn't solve the majority of the problem, but it would make the issue seem less urgent.
>
> Well, that is a question of political tactics. Personally I think it
> is not a good look to refuse to help mitigate a problem because you
> want the problem to be more obviously bad for tactical reasons.
>
> I tried to help by suggesting possible starting strategies. You don't
> need to agree with me. But in order to effect any change here you
> will need to build a coalition of opinion sufficient to force a change
> in Debian's approach.
>
> I think the problem with proprietary addons offered by software in
> Debian is a significant one, which we should address head-on. If we
> did that then users who are concerned with their own software freedom
> will easily be able to avoid both this DRM code, and proprietary
> addons. Ie, solving the problem of addons would solve your firefox
> problem.
Addons seem like a separate, larger, less critical problem. But maybe you're right - maybe focusing on the more general problem makes more sense.
Firefox is definitely an example for non-free addons in general - for example, the extension "Evernote" is proprietary. Gnome extensions must be free software. To find other examples, I quickly find myself expanding from "addons" to package managers in general. "playonlinux" is a good example, but it's already in contrib. Some other package managers like npm or rubygems only install free software.
It'd probably be necessary to go through the packages in main and see if any other packages download and install proprietary software at all, or if this is just Firefox even in the more general case.
> That's why I wrote this:
>
> > > Problem 3 is awkward because in Debian we do not have a consensus
> > > understanding of when it is appropriate for a package in main to
> > > download and run proprietary software. I think this will require a
> > > General Resolution to fix, but necessary groundwork involves figuring
> > > out what behavioural profiles users want, and trying to align those
> > > behavioural profiles to our existing archive areas.
>
> Feel free not to take my advice.
>
> But I am afraid that your current approach is doomed. You seem to
> have come to -legal to try to use it as a lever to fix #837091. But
> -legal has no authority.
>
> Maybe you came here to drum up support. That got you engagement with
> one potential ally, namely me. But you have responded by arguing with
> me about semantics and details, rather than looking for common ground
> and trying to develop a political strategy. So I am not encouraged
> :-(.
>
> Regards,
> Ian.
>
>
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