Debian packages advertising non-free services (was: [pkg-go] Bug#856139: Bug#856139: certspotter: long description advertises commercial service)

[Ben Finney <bignose@debian.org>]

Vincent Bernat <bernat@debian.org> writes:

>  ❦  7 août 2017 18:12 GMT, "Dr. Bas Wijnen" <wijnen@debian.org> :
>
> >> Example: [s3cmd]
> >
> > How is this not in contrib? This software is useless without the
> > non-free service (which is also software, and it is not in main)
> > from Amazon. Policy even mentions as an example for things in
> > contrib: wrapper packages or other sorts of free accessories for
> > non-free programs. That's exactly what this is.
>
> In this case, free S3 implementations exist (like Swift, available
> in Debian).

Do you think the free-software services are sufficiently brought to the
attention of the APT user, when considering the ‘s3cmd’ package? Or does
‘s3cmd’ rather give the impression that Amazon's non-free service is
needed?

> However, it is easy to find other packages interacting with
> proprietary services without a free implementation. For example, any
> package interacting with Google Cloud (golang-google-cloud package).

I am in agreement with Bas when he says: If other packages also violate
our principles or policy, that means they should be fixed, not that this
should be allowed.

So, “it is not hard to find other packages in Debian [with this
problem]” is not addressing the problem.

-- 
 \      “Yesterday I saw a subliminal advertising executive for just a |
  `\                                           second.” —Steven Wright |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney