[Debian-med-packaging] Question about proper archive area for packages that require big data for operation

[Russ Allbery]

Laszlo Kajan <lkajan at debian.org> writes:

> This email is to continue the discussion about free packages that depend
> on big (e.g. >400MB) free data outside 'main'. These packages apparently
> violate policy 2.2.1 [0] for inclusion in 'main' because they require
> software outside the 'main' area to function. They do not violate point
> #1 of the social contract [1], which requires non-dependency on non-free
> components. For these big data packages, policy seems to be overly
> restrictive compared to the social contract, leading to seemingly
> unfounded rejection from 'main'.

> * In case the social contract indeed allows such packages to be in
> 'main' (and policy is overly restrictive), how could it be ensured that
> the packages are accepted?

Yes, I agree.  Although we should probably talk with ftp-master about
whether they would like the data to just be packaged and uploaded as a
regular package.

> * What is the procedure within Debian to elicit a decision about the
> handling of such packages in terms of archive area? Discussion on
> d-devel, followed by policy change? Asking the policy team to clarify
> policy for such packages? Technical committee?

Discussing it on debian-devel seems right, but I would also draw it to
ftp-master's attention, since they're the people who have to worry about
archive size).  We can easily move on to modifying Policy if there's a
consensus to let packages like that pull the data down from some external
source.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>