Re: Status of Virtualbox in debian
On Mon, Jun 20, 2022 at 02:21:53PM +0200, Anders Andersson wrote:
> I remember when Virtualbox was removed from debian, and I remember the
> reasons. That's why I was surprised when I saw a recent message to the
> list where a user tried to install it. Searching for "virtualbox"
> indeed shows me that it is available in stretch-backports and sid:
> https://packages.debian.org/virtualbox&exact=1
>
> Has something changed that makes virtualbox workable again, or has it
> *always* been available in sid?
>
My recollection is that it has always been available in sid. There are
two slightly different meanings for "removed from Debian". There is
total removal as a result of things like licensing, which results in the
package being removed from all Debian distributions (including unstable
and experimental). Then there is removal from testing (and therefore
stable) as a result of major bugs or inability to provide security
support. This is the case with packages like VirtualBox, MySQL (and
mostly anything else from Oracle), where upstream refuses to provide
information concerning which changes address which security
vulnerabilities. That information is necessary for the Debian security
team to properly support packages in a stable release.
Regards,
-Roberto
--
Roberto C. Sánchez
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