[For some unknown reason I haven't received your reply, despite being in the Cc: list, it seems... I had to download your reply from the BTS]
On Mon, 17 May 2010 11:52:39 +0200 Cesare Tirabassi wrote: > >I hope that I clearly expressed my reasoning and that you agree with me. > > Its not a question of me agreeing with you or not, it is a question if > I, as a maintainer, wish to support the greater number of users or > not. I think there are many Debian users who do not have contrib or non-free archives in their sources.list... Hence the problem seems to be that, in order to enable one single non-free-nvidia-driver-specific feature, the package was moved away from Debian main and all the above users won't get the new version via apt (or other similar automatic package update tools). > Like it or not most users who have an nvidia card like to use > this conky feature. The fact is that, in order to enable this feature, conky is built by including nvidia stuff, which is related to nvidia non-free drivers. In other words, the conky package currently in testing/contrib indirectly (build-)depends on non-free code. Users who don't want to use non-free packages, similarly don't want to use packages that directly or indirectly (build-)depend on non-free stuff. The current package in contrib is basically denying those users a 100 % free conky in Debian main... > I don't actually agree with you when you say that contrib could > possibly pollute your system : Things like http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/firmware-b43-installer http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/googleearth-package http://packages.debian.org/testing/flashplugin-nonfree http://packages.debian.org/testing/mathematica-fonts http://packages.debian.org/testing/ttf-mscorefonts-installer should made it clear that having contrib in sources.list implies that one must closely review each package before installation, in order to avoid polluting their systems with non-free software... > just to be clear, neither I use > non-free stuff, nor I use nvidia hardware but since I maintain the > package I also have contrib enabled on my system; contrib seems to me > a very sensible compromise. The contrib archive is a very useful "intermediate" area between non-free and main, where packages which are by themselves DFSG-free, but (build-)depend on non-main stuff, may be placed. This is useful in order to remember that, once the non-main (build-)dependencies are dropped or replaced, the package is ready to be moved to main. However, from a user's point of view, contrib is not terribly different from non-free: if one wants to avoid installing non-free stuff, neither non-free nor contrib should be in sources.list, IMO. I am still convinced that the nvidia feature should be disabled in the debianized conky. As an alternative solution, is it possible to separate out the nvidia conky feature into a distinct contrib package, so that a 100 % free conky (without nvidia-related stuff) may be moved back to main? -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/progs/scripts/pdebuild-hooks.html Need some pdebuild hook scripts? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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