On Sat, Dec 06, 2014 at 08:56:27PM -0300, hellekin wrote:
> On 12/06/2014 06:04 PM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> >>
> >> 1. Follow Debian in offering "main", "contrib", and "non-free"
> >> repositories; I assume that we would adopt Debian's position that
> >> everything outside main is "not part of the OS but offered as a
> >> convenience to users" if we do this.
> >>
> >> 1.(a) As in 1, but rename "non-free" to "antisocial".
> >>
> >> 2. Drop contrib and non-free entirely.
> >>
> >> 3. Merge contrib, non-free, and software packaged by users into one
> >> repo known as "community".
> >>
> >> 3.(a) As in 3, but name the new repo "unsupported".
> >
> > I recently proposed another one:
> >
> > 4. Keep contrib and nonfree as they are, but add a new one,
> > 'antisocial' to contain systemd and all its dependents.
> > We take things out of 'antisocial' as we are able to remove their
> > dependencies. If we don't want to sound so negative, we could call it
> > 'systemd' instead.
> >
> *** 5. keep all Debian repositories as they are, but make non-free not
> available by default, in the same manner of experimental and backports,
> which is my preferred option, although I had to laugh at reading Hendrik's.

Last time I installed Debian, main was all that got enabled by default.
I then proceeded to enable non-free so I could get ethernet working.
This implies that 5 is the same as 1.
But then, I always use debootstrap+chroot to install these days, so I
probably get a different setup from most.

4 is amusing, but somehow doesn't seem plausible.

Regarding 3, I would prefer 3a over 3, but really, I'd prefer to see
*clearer* indications of licenses, not muddier.
(If license were visible in aptitude it would be nice...)

I read the comment about 1(a) only being a counter-proposal to 3,
but to beat a dead horse...
it applies a generic derogatory epithet to one particular approach to
licensing, thus both obscuring the objection to non-free software
and implying that *all* F/L/OSS approaches are perfectly fine in all
respects.

"You need a network connection to get a working network driver" is
something that some people can put up with.
But when the price of a USB wireless adapter is a significant portion
of the weekly budget before checking whether it needs firmware,
the solution that is almost certain to be adopted is to toss the
the install media. That's the typical situation in my area.

In theory, I'd like to see "non-free" split up so that if all someone
wants is driver firmware, they don't get offered flash and every other
piece of non-free software.

In practice, there's a real cost to rearranging the repositories:
it will *not* be a standard upgrade from Debian to Devuan.
Someone who knows what to enable will suddenly find themselves lost.

(Another theoretical possibility is to have a license field that
could be used for pinning; netbsd pkgsrc does something similar
to this.)

In the end, I'd rank it thus:
1 > 5 >= 1a > 3 > 3a > 2

Thanks,
Isaac Dunham