Re: deregulate/purge "non-free"; merge "contrib" & "main"
On Wednesday 23 June 1999, at 14 h 6, the keyboard of Will Lowe
<harpo@UDel.Edu> wrote:
> Nonfree stuff isn't part of Debian(tm), and never can be. The
> current scheme allows _only_ Debian developers to create packages for
> non-free, which lends an aura of officialness.
A (deserved) aura of quality assurance.
> Take non-free completely
> off of the ftp.debian.org (and mirror) system. Create a
> userland.debian.org site (or something similar) which allows non-Debian
> people to upload stuff in addition to Debian maintainers.
One of the reasons I mention most often to keep people away from RedHat is
their "contrib" area (nothing to do with Debian contrib, which is badly
misnomed), where anyone can upload anything, without being registered
anywhere, without even one lintian check at the first installation, without a
bug tracking system or a search system.
And, since many packages are not in RedHat main, you cannot do anything
without contrib (unlike Debian where it is realistic to work only with
official Debian packages).
Do NOT import that trashcan into Debian! If people want to make packages
without any Debian blessing, they can do it and upload them to their own area
<ftp://ftp.internatif.org/pub/debian/UNOFFICIAL/>.
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