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Re: Software in main that is throughly useless without non-free software



Interesting to note are TTFs...

There are free TrueType font files, but I cannot find a free TTF editor
or converter.  So the only way to have a TTF is if you created it with
non-free software that I can find...  Based on james' reasoning above as
I understand it, this means that TrueType stuff can't be done without
non-free software.  While I _STRONGLY_ disagree with this, it's my
understanding of what he's saying.


If I'm wrong I'm certain he will correct me.  In the meantime it begs the
question: Does this mean everything that uses freetype must go into
contrib?

Using apt-cache's reverse-depends listing (which actually counts suggests
and recommends I THINK---but we pretty much decided that suggests outside
of main are bad and we will soon do away with them or something (which I
didn't agree with then and don't really agree with now but I think I lost
that argument pretty much (unless someone wants to restart it maybe))) I
came up with a list of packages affected:

     afterstep, aview, cgoban, cjk-latex, dox, enlightenment,
     enlightenment-docs, enlightenment-nosound,
     enlightenment-theme-brushedmetal, enlightenment-theme-clean,
     enlightenment-theme-cleanbig, enlightenment-theme-estepclassic,
     enlightenment-theme-estepnew, enlightenment-theme-ice,
     enlightenment-theme-shinymetal, freetype-tools, freetype1,
     freetype1-dev, freetype2, freetype2-dev, freewrl, fvwmconf, gem,
     gltt-bin, gltt2, gltt2-dev, hatman, html2ps, imagemagick, imgsizer,
     libgfont, libgfont-dev, libmagick4-dev, libmagick4-lzw-dev,
     libmagick4g, libmagick4g-lzw, mgp, moonlight, mozilla, netscape3,
     netscape4, pcd2html, pd, perlmagick, php3, php3-cgi, php3-cgi-gd,
     php3-gd, pike-image, roxen, webmagick, xfstt, xmbdfed, xmorph, yudit


WHEE!  55 packages!  And I bet if I ran those through to find out what
depends on them the list WILL get longer.  IIRC james said the number of
packages affected doesn't matter to him at all.  Well it matters to me,
especially what packages are affected.  I'm guessing it matters to other
people too.  mozilla, roxen, imagemagick, perlmagick, afterstep, E...  Oh
yes, I believe this matters.


In all fairness a number of those ARE almost certainly Suggests: lines
and could be ignored or removed.  However, if the suggests are there and
they shouldn't be, the packages need bugs filed anyway for superfluous
relationships since they will cause the user to end up installing more
software than they would otherwise.  =>  I'm probably going to have
another look at my list and attempt to shorten it by filing wishlist bugs
later, I'm too tired now.



The whole point is simple:  How far do we want to go?  Are we going put
lilo in contrib because of the non-free BIOS in your PC next?  It's been
argued by a few people (myself included) on irc that removing tik because
of the server it uses is the same thing as removing lilo because of the
BIOS it uses...

It's also been argued there's a free BIOS for an x86 emulator out there,
but almost nobody is going to use lilo with an x86 emulator---they'll use
it with their x86 box!  Just like almost nobody would use anything but
AOL's non-free server for tik...


Of course, when I brought up TTFs on irc, it was immediately argued that
you could make a TTF in beav or something.  Of course you could make an
AIM server in perl or if the protocol is simple enough, bash and netcat.. 
The argument apparently doesn't hold for tik so why does it hold for
TTFs?  IMO the argument could not apply to one and not the other.



(pondering helping Manoj write an AIM server in bash and netcat)

--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>            Debian GNU/Linux developer
PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE            The Source Comes First!
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<ultima> netgod: My calculator has more registers than the x86, and
         -thats- sad

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