Re: weekly policy summary

[Chris Waters <xtifr@dsp.net>]

Francesco Tapparo <cesco@goldnet.it> writes:

> My complaint is that dselect offer to install the Suggested package, hinting
> to the user to install it: this strike again the Debian spirit.

We have already discussed this in great detail.  Two proposals that
were put forth that both seem reasonable to me are:

  a) suggestions of packages that aren't available will not be
  displayed (so that someone who doesn't have non-free packages in her
  package list will not see the suggestion).

  b) providing some form of "reverse-suggests" so that non-free
  packages can suggest themselves if and only if they are in someone's
  package list.

Note that the common element of both proposals is that someone who has
non-free packages in her package list will see them, and someone who
doesn't won't.  This really seems like the best approach all 'round.

I tend to favor the former proposal myself because it's simpler and
probably requires less hacking of existing code.  But I have removed
non-free suggests from packages I'e adopted in the mean time.  (As a
compromise, I mention the non-free package -- saying it's non-free --
in the package description.)

Back when non-us was all lumped together, this was a more contentious
issue; now that non-us is divided properly (about time imo!), it may
be time to reopen the issue, I'm not sure.  I *am* sure that it would
make RMS happy if we finally got this resolved, but RMS isn't in
charge of Debian, so....
-- 
Chris Waters   xtifr@dsp.net | I have a truly elegant proof of the
      or    xtifr@debian.org | above, but it is too long to fit into
http://www.dsp.net/xtifr     | this .signature file.