On Wed, May 05, 1999 at 08:33:40PM -0700, Joseph Carter wrote:
First note: There aren't any free TrueType editors? That's not good. There
don't even seem to be any projects to create one. That's not good either.
It's nice to see that this sort of discussion points out areas where free
software is lacking.
> 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
Yay. Woo. Now, how did you come up with that?
I tried using apt-cache to come up with a list like this [0], and came up
with chains like:
tkinfo Suggests: tkman
tkman Depends: lpr
lpr Suggests: magicfilter
magicfilter Suggests: enscript
enscripts Suggests: gv
gv Depends: xaw3dg
xaw3dg Conflicts: xaw3d (!)
xaw3d Suggests: nextawg
nextawg Suggests: afterstep (or wmaker)
afterstep Depends: imagemagick
imagemagick Depends: freetype2
Which doesn't seem particularly convincing to me. But perhaps you had
a better method. I can't tell if you don't tell me what it is, though.
> 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.
Yup. Trace it through 15 rounds and libc6 `depends' on freetype. Not for
particularly useful values of `depends', though.
> In all fairness a number of those ARE almost certainly Suggests: lines
> and could be ignored or removed.
This includes the second example you list, aview.
And in any case, you completely mischaracterised the result of the "Should
main packages suggest contrib/non-free packages?" discussion. The result
was not "No, they mustn't, such things must be thrown out of main", it was
"Well, yeah, it's a pain, let's implement an Enhances: dependency and
replace main Suggests contrib/non-free with contrib/non-free Enhances
main".
Suggests are /completely/ irrelevant for this discussion.
> 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...
Let's see. LILO uses BIOS code to do its job, does it -- like it
calls BIOS functions. Gee. That's like library calls. Hey! Lilo links
to non-free code! It *already* shouldn't be in main, what a double
standard *that* is. It's okay to link to BIOSes, but it's not okay to
link libxforms?! Bunch of hypocrites.
No, no one's suggesting people should be concerned about every possible
dependency on non-free software, only the ones where we believe avoiding
the dependency on non-free software is a useful and possible thing to do.
If you want to prove that it *is* impossible, don't keep on exaggerating
your case. We're not suggesting throwing Lilo out, and the 55 packages
you list aren't equally affected if Truetype software were to be dumped
into contrib.
> 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...
Almost nobody? No, _nobody at all_. And not by choice, but because there
just isn't an alternative.
If there's an alternative to non-free BIOSes, even if it's not one that
people choose to use with any frequency then you've just defeated your
own argument: if there was an alternative to non-free servers for TiK,
whether people want to use it or not, then that's *fine* for main.
Cheers,
aj
[0] echo freetype freetype2 xfstt > badpkgs.txt.0
X=0
while [ $X -lt 20 ]; do
Y=$[$X + 1]
apt-cache showpkg `cat badpkgs.txt.$X` |
awk '/Reverse Depends:/,/Dependencies:/ { print } ' |
grep -v "^Rev" | grep -v "^Dep" | sed 's/,.*$//' |
sort -u > badpkgs.txt.$Y
wc badpkgs.txt.$Y;
X=$Y
done
FWIW, wc gives: 3177 3177 37952 badpkgs.txt.20
It also gives: 54 54 794 badpkgs.txt.2, which is more
or less what Joseph gave above, give and take a couple of packages.
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.
``Smart, sexy, single. Pick any two (you can't have all three).''
-- RFC 1925, paraphrased: a guide to networking in the '90s
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