Bug#38902: [PROPOSED] data section
Package: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist
This is Fabian's proposal with a few modifications. The last proposal was
not put into the BTS and then there was talk of waiting for Wichert's
proposal. I've talked with our DPL and he doesn't have one.. not on this
topic. So.. here it is again and formally proposed according to Manoj's
scheme.
Some of this text comes from an email I received from Richard Kreckel.
Since there is interest in packaging census data, maps, genome data
and other huge datasets I and since most people agreed that dropping them
in main or contrib is not a great idea, I propose the creation of a data
section to reside along side of main, contrib and non-free.
The data section would be governed by the following rules:
- No package can depend on a package in data.
- No package with an executable can go into data unless it is useable ONLY
with a dataset in data.
- The maintainer decision on this subject is just the same as with the
Section: field. It's a suggestion that can be override by the archive
maintainer.
- Only DFSG free datasets are alowed in data. There is no non-free section
of data and contrib does not make sense when applied to datasets. To
that end, datasets can not depend on anything in contrib or non-free.
- Datasets that currently have no DFSG-free viewer are still DFSG-free if
the license to that data is DFSG-free.
reason:
- The data subdirectory is an entire part of Debian. Its purpose is to
let the CD vendors/archives maintainers/users choice between a Debian
Light who fit on a reasonable amount of CDs, and an Debian Extended who
can fill your entire RAID array.
--
Please cc all mailing list replies to me, also.
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