Wichert Akkerman - Debian project leader wrote:
> I already mentioned a while ago that I think that the distinction
> between main and contrib & non-free is becoming less clear, both
> to users and developers.
Apparently.
However, one thing you haven't mentioned yet, are out package-fetch
tools like apt, dpkg-ftp, dpkg-multicd etc. They still use
"stable/main stable/contrib and stable/non-free" as default when
setting it up. This should changed, imho. It is fine to mention that
the user can use "stable/contrib and stable/non-free", however, the
default should only mention main.
Moving the non-free (and contrib) part out of the main archive is a
logical conclusion to our social contract. I don't understand why
developers who agree to our social contract now disagree with this
conclusion.
Users still are able to use non-free and contrib sections. Apt is
perfect when accessing different archives. Even dpkg-ftp has been
improved so it can do that as well. Other methods need to be
presented a local mirror, so they're sort of "outside", I agree.
Contra
But: In my opinion we MUST NOT vote for or against this proposal if
we do not have a practical solution handy: i.e. if we don't have two
(see below.) machine to take contrib+non-free, as well as archive
maintainers willing to work on two more hosts.
And: If the main archive is split, the non-US archive needs to be
split as well. This would need us to create
nonfree.non-US.debian.org as well. Darn, that's ugly :( [Or move
master into the free world and hook non-US up]
And: What about contrib? It is consididered DFSG-free except that
it depends on non-free stuff. It is not non-free software, so it
would misplaced on a nonfree host. Creating contrib.debian.org
sounds stupid for me.
If people want to setup a special mirror consisting of main, contrib
and non-free, that's fine and should be possible.
My personal conclusion
The issue needs further discussion. Especially it needs some
solutions before we may decide anything. At the moment it is not
practical.
Of course, I appreciate if we would split the archive as it reflects
our social contract and visibly prefers free software over non-free
software, but still acknowledges that users want to use non-free
parts.
As a transition into the right path I would like to ask the
maintainers of our access methods to remove non-free from the
default settings but keep the tools mention it as comments if they
like. This affects apt, dpkg-ftp, dpkg-multicd at least, I'm not
sure about other methods.
Best regards,
Joey
PS: Are you sure that -vote is the proper place to discuss this and
not -devel?
--
The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
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