Re: [PROPOSED] Change package relations policy to remove references to non-free from main
> Raul> For the worst case "suggests -> enhances" mess, you could
> Raul> even create a single empty non-free package which enhances
> Raul> the free part and which suggests any of a suite of non-free
> Raul> software. This puts administrative control in the right place,
> Raul> yet leaves a clean interface between the part which may be
> Raul> freely distributed and the part which may not be.
On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 09:53:45AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> That is a such a gortesque hack. And what exactly is it buying
> that makes it better than improving dselect not to display missing
> heirarchies? (Apart from not handling the non-US issue, since most
> CD's here in the US do *not* carry the non-US category).
non-us/main is very different from non-free. The first consists of
DFSG software with temporary and/or localized distribution problems.
The second consists of non-DFSG software.
And it buys us a clean separation between the DFSG and non-DFSG parts
of the system.
Personally, I think that hard-coding into a DFSG package a reference
to some non-DFSG package is rather grotesque. I'm disappointed that
we disagree on this issue.
> Concentrating on the non-free in exclusion to the non-US is
> putting the religious issue in front of technical ones; that's just
> one thing that bothers me about this proposal. So far, Debian has
> always been about excellence, not about fanaticism.
The distinction being?
Excellence has always been a matter of opinion -- informed, experienced,
opinion, but opinion nonetheless.
You're labelling DFSG issues as religion, and offering in its place
status quo. But you're not thinking about the changes which are going
to happen as Linux (and Debian) become more popular, and are adopted
by large commercial interests.
Right now, we have a tradition of putting contrib on our official disk
set. Which is fine. But we also have a tradition of >>not allowing
a disk set which consists of DFSG only software to be called official<<.
You call that technical excellence? You call a course which would allow
deviation from this tradition fanaticism?
Why?
> Raul> I think that's much better than creating a "Maybe-Suggests:"
> Raul> and stuffing non-free references into the DFSG packages.
>
> If the references are never displayed *to people who dio not
> want* tham, why is that so bad? And why are we going through hoops to
> impose the religion on everyone else as well?
What do you mean by "display"? You want to chain people to dselect?
Simple is good.
--
Raul
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