Can DFSG firmware not rebuildable within Debian still go in main?

[Frédéric Brière <fbriere@fbriere.net>]

Hi everybody,

I'm currently working on a package (opencbm, ITP #437316) which includes
6502 code that is sent to external devices (namely, old Commodore disk
drives and printers).

All of this (GPL) code is provided as both source and binary.  However,
the source is meant to be compiled with cc65, which is not included in
Debian (see the debian-legal archives for details on that whole saga).
While there is another 6502 compiler in Debian (xa65), any porting would
be far from trivial, and the quality of the code would suffer, IMO.


I'm therefore wondering which category this package should go into.  It
*does* build fine within main, given that the 6502 code is pre-built,
but that code cannot be modified and rebuilt within Debian.

I initially thought it shouldn't matter too much if we didn't give user
X the luxury of having all the build tools nicely packaged, as long as
buildd is happy.  But then I figured the security team might have a
different opinion, and object to having a package in main where not
every nut and bolt was easily accessible.

(Though, to be honest, I highly doubt that sending some code to a C=64
drive could present any security risk to the host computer.  But it
could be argued that there lies a slippery slope.)


I guess it all depends on what Policy means by "require a package for
compilation".  Does this include the ability to modify any part of the
source beforehand?


-- 
<doogie> Thinking is dangerous.  It leads to ideas.
		-- Seen on #Debian