On 8/13/17 1:05 PM, Dr. Bas Wijnen wrote:
My purpose of this thread (which is a question asked elsewhere) is to find out if there is consensus about this issue. If there isn't, I don't want to bother everyone with a mass bug report. Which, as Russ pointed out, would be a pretty large operation. Also, I don't want to move lots of software to contrib. I would much rather have it fixed by removing the support for the non-free services, or by having plugin systems that allow only the non-free-interfacing part to be in contrib. However, that is still a large operation, so I still do not want to do a mass bug filing unless there is consensus that it should be done. So far, it doesn't seem like there is consensus at all.
Getting past all the obfuscatory count and counterpoint, there seem to be two clear questions on the table:
1. Given a piece of FOSS client software, that has no purpose other than to interface with a proprietary back-end service (say a FOSS twitter GUI), should that be considered "free software" for the purposes of placement in main vs. contrib vs. non-free? (Or alternatively, where should it reside?)
2. Given a piece of FOSS client software that interfaces to, among other things, a proprietary back-end service (e.g., a multi-protocol chat interface that includes AIM and MS Messenger among the back-ends it supports), be placed in contrib or non-free, simply because its description mentions those services?
Personally, I don't really care, and could argue both points either way. But they are clear policy questions that might be of interest to packagers.
Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra