On Thu, May 06, 1999 at 08:06:58AM -0700, Robert Woodcock wrote:
> You are talking about separating out main because of moral reasons, not
> technical reasons like the one behind contrib's creation in the first
> place, and I don't see a need for it.
The reason contrib exists is a moral one -- it's a place where stuff that's
free, but depends on non-free stuff goes.
The techincal issue -- that the software depends on non-free software --
is solved by the `Depends:', `Conflicts:' and related fields.
The only `technical' reason for contrib's existence that I can see is the
"avoid dselect whining about non-free packages when dealing with main",
which we haven't dealt with anyway, as the Suggests: debate from a while
ago demonstrated.
> It also assumes the person who wants to read the document is on the same
> computer, and is in fact the same person as the person who wrote the
> document.
`contrib is a bunch of free software that might be helpful in the
painfully proprietry world we live in'
`main, on the other hand, is the Debian system, it's free-free-free,
nothin' but free'.
I don't see that as a particularly bad distinction to be working towards.
I also think it makes for a stronger demonstration of free software's
viability if we can say "You can install Debian from CD, and get only
free software, and use all of it in a free-software only universe *right
now*". AFAIK, we can do that today -- sure we can't use ICQ and TiK and
whatever at the moment, but we can use Emacs, and TeX and whatever. If,
as Joseph seems to be claiming, we *can't*, then I think we should *know*
about this, so we can get people interested in working on creating free
TrueType font editors and whatever else.
> For most users of word document readers, this is not the case, they just
> want to read that email attachment that Joe Random sent them.
And they probably want to play Quake, and use Netscape, and view gifs,
and whatever else, too. That's great! Again, if this is what they want,
they're welcome to point apt at non-free and contrib, or get some extra
CDs, or whatever, and just *do* this.
Cheers,
aj
--
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).''
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