Johannes Wiedersich dijo [Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 03:25:52PM +0100]: > I have one additional suggestion and a further question to the project. > > The suggestion is to add a debconf question to each installation from > that 'firmware section'. This will honestly point out to users that they > are about to install non-free stuff which is not part of debian proper [1]. > > Now the question: > Would this section not be better called 'sourceless'? > > IMHO this would better point out, where exactly the problem with it is > (compared to 'firmware' or similar). > > It might be useful to allow sourceless documentation into that section > as well. Documentation is not part of the OS in a strict sense (and also > not software in a strict sense). While I agree that documentation should > conform to the DFSG just like software, I have to admit that I believe > that the 'entry barrier' for non-free documentation on my computer > system should be lower than that for non-free code. > (...)
Sometimes we don't include documentation not because it is sourceless (at any rate, what is the source for a .txt file but that file itself?), but because it is simply non-free. Think about the RFCs: They are not legally modifiable. and there is _good_ reason for that (i.e. if you modify/redistribute RFC821, you might trick somebody into believing that GIVEMEROOTSHELL is a valid SMTP command). We cannot create a new category for every different set of freedoms/restrictions. I think Kurt's proposal is quite adequate for _this_ specific situation, which has proven not to be a short-time problem but something that we will probably face for good. We will always have to work with hardware depending on sourceless firmware, and this is a clean way out of that problem. As for documentation (or for whatever else we currently have as non-free), we can always point the users to the proper distribution site or whatever. Greetings, -- Gunnar Wolf - gw...@gwolf.org - (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244 PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23 Fingerprint: 0C79 D2D1 2C4E 9CE4 5973 F800 D80E F35A 8BB5 27AF -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org