[Foo2zjs-maintainer] Bug#449497: foo2zjs: application depends on non-free firmware

[Steffen Joeris]

On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:12:49 pm Luca Capello wrote:
> Hi there!
>
> On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:03:46 +0100, Steffen Joeris wrote:
> > On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 07:38:51 +0100. Joost Yervante Damad wrote:
> >> I understand your sentiment, and it is indeed a "grey" area situation.
> >> If I take policy literary, I think this package is fine in main, but it
> >> is not as simple...
> >>
> >> In order to get this bug rolling (and lenny released ;-) ), can you all
> >> live with me splitting up the package in two packages:
> >>
> >> 1) foo2zjs: this contains everything, and lives in mains, which
> >> Suggests: 2) foo2zjs-contrib: this contains getweb
>
> I strongly object to a single-script package.
>
> Quickly speaking, I think the situation is similar to the kernel
> firwmare issue ATM discussed on d-d (started at [1]): foo2zjs, the
> software, seems to be perfectly fine for main, not only because as
> Steffen already pointed out some printers can work without the non-free
> firmware [2][3].  And despite upstream opinion [4], all the non-free
> files have already been stripped out from the package [5].
>
> The only problem remaining for foo2zjs in main is then the getweb
> script: this can be broken because upstream changes his website layout,
> but this is nothing different than any other simple bug.  If this
> happened, then we'll fix it, full stop.
>
> >> I know a package with just a script is not nice, but it is more in the
> >> spirit of the debian policy indeed.
> >
> > I would like to hear Michael's word on it, since he was the more
> > active one during the last uploads. In fact, I am happy to give up
> > maintainership, as this package (and the tiresome discussion around
> > it) is really no fun.
> >
> > Maybe Michael would like to step in and help out maintaining the
> > package?
>
> Since I needed this package and it was broken/not-updated in lenny, I
> spent some time on it and already offered to take over maintenance [6],
> but no one replied yet.  Again, I volunteer to become part of the Debian
> maintainer team.
Please send me your alioth login and I'll add you to the foo2zjs project on 
alioth.
I do understand that it is problematic to just download some files from some 
upstream homepage. There should be a warning added to the download gui and it 
should then list all the files that where download. This way, the admin is at 
least informed.
Nonetheless, the package in main at the moment is not non-free.

Cheers
Steffen
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