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Re: Automatic downloading of non-free software by stuff in main



Anthony DeRobertis writes ("Re: Automatic downloading of non-free software by stuff in main"):
> Ok, let's take an example: how should Firefox (or Chromium) behave 
> differently if the free-only flag is set?

The minimum implementation IMO is: the "addons" menu is greyed out, or
simply brings up a dialogue saying that this is disabled because the
Mozilla addons repository contains a mixture of free and non-free code
which is not trivial to filter.

If there are users and developers who want the more sophisticated
filtering option, they should implement it.

> Josh Tripplet's example of language package managers is another good one 
> - I doubt any of those repositories have a "is-this-DFSG-free" field. 
> And they often have search features which return results regardless of 
> license status, and features to follow dependencies (again regardless).

Language-specific package managers whose upstream repositories contain
unflagged non-free software should be disabled, when the user has
asked for a fully-free system.

I appreciate that the configuration I am describing is quite fierce.
Many people would hate it.  I wouldn't use it myself.  It shouldn't be
the default.

But the need for it is demonstrated by the existence of Debian
derivatives which do a lot of this work.

Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.


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