Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

[Joerg Jaspert]

On 16093 March 1977, Dominik George wrote:

> That surprised me. If a package is free software, in ful laccordance
> with the DFSG, why is it put into contrib? I can see where this note
> comes from — the package maintainer does not want to help people
> install non-free software, a point of view that is famous with the FSF
> and a reason for them to discourage a distribution.

> I want to open this for discussion, as I can fully understand both
> points of view. While I could discuss this with the winetricks and
> lutris maintainers alone, I think it is an important discussion and
> decision for the project as a whole.

There is, as usual, no clear answer.

The policy for main is clear on that it needs to be self contained. So 
software in main must not require something outside to work and do its 
job. Contrib is the area where that is allowed. License wise its the 
same as main, but it allows to depend on something not available for 
building or working.

And I think that is why you find those packages over in contrib. Their 
main point is using something that's not in Debian. Yes, it may be 
entirely free software in itself, but that is not all that counts for 
main.

Now, if you can (and do) package a whole bunch of games that lutris 
supports, and the ability to load *more* from elsewhere is there, but 
not neccessary for its core functionality, it would be fine to go to 
main. (Assuming one can "fix" the winetricks dependency in a similar 
way, which I doubt, but thats another point).


-- 
bye, Joerg