Re: Porting of non-free packages
On Tue, Feb 20, 2001 at 02:50:15PM +0900, Tomohiro KUBOTA wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I see. I understand the limitation of the resource. It is reasonable
> that main packages have priority in such a case.
definitely.
> Xearth is the package I want to build now. Though it may be free in
> future (with removal of GIF-related functions; the former maintainer
> of xearth said that), it is not likely free xearth will be released
> before the freeze of Woody.
can't it just use libungif?
[snip]
> I think, without supported by buildd, almost non-free packages don't
> have any chance to be included in testing. Please imagine when Woody
> will be released and someone wants to download a non-free package
> for Woody. If the package is not available for Woody, Sid version
> will be the only package which is available. However, Sid version
> of package may depend on Sid version of libc and so on.
>
> There are a few solutions.
>
> - Buildd supports non-free also. (with lower priority so that
> non-free packages should not affect building of main packages...
> any idea of "lower priority"? "after freeze" is a good idea.)
>
> - Non-free packages can be included in testing without having
> binaries for all architectures. (Since non-free is not an official
> part of Debian, this doesn't mean degrading quality of Debian.)
....
or it can be made DFSG-free so it can be put in main, which is
probably the solution most people would like.
I think things work mostly Ok the way they are now, if upstream
doesn't care to make their stuff dfsg-free, the prevailing
attitude will be that debian in general doesn't care about their
software. If individual developers want to make it available on
more arch's, I don't think they should be hindered, so long as
it does not compromise support of the actual distro.
PS, I have a few non-free/contrib packages, I'm not "anti non-free",
but it is non-free.
--
Brian Russo <brusso@phys.hawaii.edu>
Debian/GNU Linux <wolfie@debian.org> http://www.debian.org
LPSG "member" <wolfie@lpsg.org> http://www.lpsg.org
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