[Foo2zjs-maintainer] Bug#449497: Post-Lenny discussion on packages with external (potentially non-free) dependencies

[Giacomo A. Catenazzi]

Michael S. Gilbert wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> First of all, congratulations on getting the Lenny release out the
> door!  I understand that it was a lot of work, and you're probably
> looking forward to at least somewhat of a break.  So I don't want
> to treat this problem with too much urgency (yet), but I would like to
> get a dialog going as people find the time to weigh in with their
> opinions.

(...) [removing the long mail: too long to quote, too interesting
to extract the best parts.

my case (microcode.ctl):
- the package is in contrib and not in main
- I download only ascii file, converted to binary and feed
   to the kernel device only at loading time, so difficult to exploit
- intel microcode is crypted, thus it is difficult to modify
- user had the possibility to download the microcode manually
   and to put in the right position
- no microcode no worrying: the computer work normally
   (but on new processors on a new family, with usually needs
   a lot of updates, but usually these are developer machine, not
   production machines.)
- but with problem on distribution format. Intel (I think wrongly)
   changed the format (instead of a compressed file, it did a
   compressed tar of the file) thus breaking debian and ubuntu.
- but with last versions, Intel changed (again) the microcode license
   (I think because of us [or better because of Ubuntu :'( ] ),
   so now microcode is distributed by a non-free package.
   The script to download microcode from intel side is only
   a convenience script.
   I could live (and I think also our user) fine, if I remove the
   script from postinst (BTW it was called after asking confirmation
   via debconf)
- the microcode now could be installed also by the kernel firmware
   infrastructure, so I still had to decide a proper procedure with
   Intel and RedHat, and to debian firmware. After this the package
   will be a legacy only package.


BTW: I still have the non-free.* domains, if Debian need it.

ciao
	cate