Hi! Thanks algernon, Lucas and Moray for running… I'd like to present my apologies for the following questions. Feel free to simply dismiss them.
In the lightning talks session of DebConf11, I presented [1] some wild thoughts about contrib, the Desert Island test, and some software Debian currently ship in main. To sum it up: 1. Some software Debian distribute are actually only useful when connected to the Internet to access services for which the source code is unavailable. 2. The Debian policy states (emphasis is mine): # 2.2.2 The contrib archive area The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to work with the Debian distribution, but **which require software outside of the distribution to either build or function**. Every package in contrib must comply with the DFSG. 3. One test I've been taught to use to reason about free software is the Desert Island test [2] which starts by: Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered computer. Obviously, software that are only frontends to unreproducible “cloud” services do not pass the desert island test. I never followed-up that (small) talk by any concrete actions, but the question still comes up to my mind from time to time. Dear candidates, do you think that libechonest [3] should be called free software? As it requires software outside of the distribution to function, do you think it should be moved to contrib? What about s3cmd [4] then? Do you think that it's a fight that's worth fighting? [1] <http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/low/783_Lightning_Talks.ogv>, starting at 00:10:33. [2] <http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html> [3] <http://packages.qa.debian.org/libe/libechonest.html> [4] <http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/s3cmd.html> -- Jérémy Bobbio .''`. lu...@debian.org : :Ⓐ : # apt-get install anarchism `. `'` `-
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