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

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  Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software Dominik George <natureshadow@debian.org> - 2021-04-04 11:20 +0200
    Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software Stephan Lachnit <stephanlachnit@debian.org> - 2021-04-04 11:40 +0200
      Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free  software Stephan Verbücheln <verbuecheln@posteo.de> - 2021-04-04 22:40 +0200
    Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free  software Andrey Rahmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2021-04-04 12:50 +0200
      Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2021-04-04 14:30 +0200
    Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org> - 2021-04-04 13:30 +0200
      Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free  software Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-04-04 14:00 +0200
        Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2021-04-05 08:00 +0200
          Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software Austin English <austinenglish@gmail.com> - 2021-04-05 08:50 +0200
          Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free  software Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> - 2021-04-06 15:00 +0200
    Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free  software Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-04-07 20:20 +0200
    Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow  using non-free software Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2021-04-08 00:20 +0200
      Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow  using non-free software Dominik George <natureshadow@debian.org> - 2021-04-08 13:00 +0200
        Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow  using non-free software Stephan Verbücheln <verbuecheln@posteo.de> - 2021-04-08 13:30 +0200
        Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2021-04-08 13:30 +0200
        Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow  using non-free software Stephan Lachnit <stephanlachnit@debian.org> - 2021-04-08 17:20 +0200

#99975 — Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

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Hi,

I have stumbled across this note, in the d/copyright file of the
lutris package:

> Comment: lutris is not part of the Debian distribution, but is in the contrib
>  archive area instead, because while lutris itself is free software, its main
>  purpose is to download and install mainly non-free software. Further, lutris
>  recommends winetricks, which itself is free software as well, but is also in
>  contrib for the same reason.

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.

But it is new to me that Debian falls for this. According to Debian
Poilcy 2.2.2, "wrapper packages or other sorts of free accessories for
non-free programs" are examples of packages that can go into contrib
as well. But neither winetricks nor lutris are wrapper packages for
non-free programs — while they do allow installing and using non-free
software as well, they can be used for any kidn of game or program,
including free software. Lutris actually has explicit support for quite a few
games that are in Debian main.

I consider it a bad idea to hide free software tools from average
users, which putting it into contrib technically does (contrib is not
enabled on vanilla installs of Debian). Packages of Lutris play a huge
role in fostering free software, even though this is not too obvious
as they do ease the use of non-free software. Example:

A gamer who uses, let's say, Windows, considers moving to Debian.
However, they do not want to drop the games the yare playing. The
two scenarios are:

 a) They try Debian, and find out they have to learn how the different
    package areas work, reconfigure their package sources, and find
    confirmation that Linux is not fit for the desktop or for gaming,
    or at least over-complicated. They stay with Windows.

 b) They try Debian, and find that it lets them run a huge amount of
    their games out of the box, with a nice frontend and game library.

Which one do we. as a community, prefer? I strongly advocate for
option b).

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.

Cheers,
Nik

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#99978

Hi Doinik,

I'm the Lutris Maintainer for Debian, and I completely agree with you.
However, at least for Lutris, there is no choice since we recommend
winetricks. Thus, I simply copied the copyright comment from
winetricks.

For winetricks it is a bit more tricky as it can download non-free
dlls afaik. On the other hand, Lutris downloads tons of files as part
of the runtime, and there might be non-free files in there (I'm aware
of at least one icon that has an unknown origin). In both cases,
nothing is installed system-wide, so one could argue it's more like
automatically wget-ing files to your home directory.

There was a larger discussion about this on debian-devel-games [1],
you might be interested in that.

Regards,
Stephan

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2021/01/msg00013.html

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#99990 — Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

On Sun, 2021-04-04 at 11:30 +0200, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
> For winetricks it is a bit more tricky as it can download non-free
> dlls afaik.

How does this compare for instance to Firefox, which can/will download
non-free binaries for DRM?

Regards

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#99980 — Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

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On Sun, Apr 04, 2021 at 11:17:01AM +0200, Dominik George wrote:
>  a) They try Debian, and find out they have to learn how the different
>     package areas work, reconfigure their package sources
(they would need that anyway as they need firmware and, very probable,
nvidia-driver)

> Which one do we. as a community, prefer? 
The project usually seems to prefer "free software" over "our users".
On the other hand, are you asking how should we interpret our founding
documents, or what should we put in them?

-- 
WBR, wRAR

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#99984

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Quoting Andrey Rahmatullin (2021-04-04 12:42:47)
> On Sun, Apr 04, 2021 at 11:17:01AM +0200, Dominik George wrote:
> > Which one do we. as a community, prefer? 
> The project usually seems to prefer "free software" over "our users".

No, the project prefer what is both free software and serves our users.

Reason is that we prioritize free software *and* our users (not free 
software *or* our users).

Concretely, our main priority is to maintain "main", "contrib" available 
as well but maintained at a lower priority.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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#99981

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

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#99983 — Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

On Sun, 04 Apr 2021 at 13:23:14 +0200, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> 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?
> 
> 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.

There was some discussion relevant to this on debian-devel-games earlier
this year: the subthread starts at
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2021/01/msg00014.html>.

I don't think the rule can be as simple as "must not require something
outside to work and do its job", because we have Free clients for non-Free
network services (like all the instant messaging services that used to
exist), and those were always in main. Similarly, it would be absurd to
kick out email clients into contrib just because they are primarily used
to read non-Free email messages like this one! :-)

As I mentioned on d-d-games, one of the major things I tend to ask myself
when thinking about the borderline between main and contrib is: if the
content that this package downloads was somehow in the Debian archive,
would the downloader have a Depends or Recommends on it, or would it be
a Suggests or no dependency at all?

Another factor in choosing main or contrib, for me, is whether the
downloader is specifically hard-coded to work with particular content,
or whether it generically works with any content in a particular
format. game-data-packager and quakespasm are both close to the main/contrib
borderline, and this factor is why I think they are in the correct archive
areas: g-d-p downloads and repackages specific non-Free games, so it's
in contrib, whereas quakespasm can play any Free or non-Free set of
Quake-compatible levels, so it's in main.

I think winetricks is *probably* correctly in contrib, because it has
hard-coded knowledge of how to best to download and install specific
non-Free Windows DLLs? Like game-data-packager, it's quite close to the
line between main and contrib, but I think it does make sense to consider
it to be on the contrib side of that line (although I'm sure I could be
convinced otherwise).

As Joerg says, this is all fairly subjective and unclear, but I think we
do have an approximately coherent policy for what can and can't be in main,
and that's realistically the best thing we are going to get.

    smcv

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#99997

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Quoting Simon McVittie (2021-04-04 13:55:21)
> On Sun, 04 Apr 2021 at 13:23:14 +0200, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> > 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?
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> There was some discussion relevant to this on debian-devel-games earlier
> this year: the subthread starts at
> <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2021/01/msg00014.html>.
> 
> I don't think the rule can be as simple as "must not require something
> outside to work and do its job", because we have Free clients for non-Free
> network services (like all the instant messaging services that used to
> exist), and those were always in main. Similarly, it would be absurd to
> kick out email clients into contrib just because they are primarily used
> to read non-Free email messages like this one! :-)
> 
> As I mentioned on d-d-games, one of the major things I tend to ask myself
> when thinking about the borderline between main and contrib is: if the
> content that this package downloads was somehow in the Debian archive,
> would the downloader have a Depends or Recommends on it, or would it be
> a Suggests or no dependency at all?
> 
> Another factor in choosing main or contrib, for me, is whether the
> downloader is specifically hard-coded to work with particular content,
> or whether it generically works with any content in a particular
> format. game-data-packager and quakespasm are both close to the main/contrib
> borderline, and this factor is why I think they are in the correct archive
> areas: g-d-p downloads and repackages specific non-Free games, so it's
> in contrib, whereas quakespasm can play any Free or non-Free set of
> Quake-compatible levels, so it's in main.
> 
> I think winetricks is *probably* correctly in contrib, because it has
> hard-coded knowledge of how to best to download and install specific
> non-Free Windows DLLs? Like game-data-packager, it's quite close to the
> line between main and contrib, but I think it does make sense to consider
> it to be on the contrib side of that line (although I'm sure I could be
> convinced otherwise).
> 
> As Joerg says, this is all fairly subjective and unclear, but I think we
> do have an approximately coherent policy for what can and can't be in main,
> and that's realistically the best thing we are going to get.

another way to answer the question is to find some software similar to the one
that you want to package and see if that software is in Debian main or in
contrib. If it is in main, then at least one DD and FTP master already agreed
that packages of that nature are fit for main.

Maybe the comparison to winetricks is not very fitting because I think
winetricks can *only* download non-free software while lutris can also download
games that their developers distribute under a DFSG license?

Let me show you a package of mine that is still in Debian main even though it
is a "downloader [that is] specifically hard-coded to work with particular
[non-free] content" and thus fails Simon's test from above:

https://packages.debian.org/source/unstable/rss-bridge

I guess most people will use that package to access non-free services like
Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. After all, rss-bridge was specifically written
to work around the limitations of these non-free services:

https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/#rant

Should anybody ever file an RC bug against the package I will point out that it
is also able to work with DFSG free software like Mediawiki. Maybe you can do
the same?

Thanks!

cheers, josch

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#100000

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 12:57 AM Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues
<josch@debian.org> wrote:
> Maybe the comparison to winetricks is not very fitting because I think
> winetricks can *only* download non-free software while lutris can also download
> games that their developers distribute under a DFSG license?

(Upstream maintainer here):

winetricks can download both free and non-free software, though I'd
say the vast majority of it is non-free (i.e., redistributable
Microsoft binaries).

On the other hand, dxvk/faudio are FOSS and can be installed via
winetricks, as well as some fonts and other programs (I don't have a
separate list handy, but you could search for 'github.com /
sourceforge.net' in the source).

It also allows setting misc wine settings via a CLI, which doesn't
require any proprietary bits.

That said, I leave it to you to decide where it belongs in debian :).

-Austin
GPG: 267B CC1F 053F 0749 (expires 2021/02/18)

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#100017 — Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

On Mon, Apr 05, 2021 at 07:57:10AM +0200, Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues wrote:
> 
> another way to answer the question is to find some software similar to the one
> that you want to package and see if that software is in Debian main or in
> contrib. If it is in main, then at least one DD and FTP master already agreed
> that packages of that nature are fit for main.
>...

Long-established precedent is that even when the sole purpose of
a package is to interact with a proprietary remote service from
Facebook/Google/Microsoft/... the package can go into main.

The border used to be that it was not permitted when downloading and 
executing code locally was required for using a package in main.

But there is precedent for packages whose sole purpose is to open
a browser window or widget with some remote URL in main.
Therefore downloading proprietary JavaScript code and binary-only 
WebAssembly and executing them locally are also covered by precedent.

> Thanks!
> 
> cheers, josch

cu
Adrian

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#100040 — Re: Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

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Hello Dominik,

On Sun 04 Apr 2021 at 11:17AM +02, Dominik George wrote:

> That surprised me. If a package is free software, in ful laccordance
> with the DFSG, why is it put into contrib?

Just to note that anything in contrib has to be fully free and
DFSG-compliant, so the issue is not about freedom but about the more
nebulous one of main being self-contained, as others have been
discussing.

-- 
Sean Whitton

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#100045 — Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

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Hi,

On 04.04.21 11:17, 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.

It goes into contrib if it is useful only with non-free software. For 
example, OpenCL client tools used to be in contrib while it was 
necessary to install the nVidia or ATI drivers to get meaningful 
functionality out of them, but when Beignet came out and a free ICD 
driver for Intel GPUs was available, that meant that OpenCL runtime 
could go to main.

> But neither winetricks nor lutris are wrapper packages for
> non-free programs — while they do allow installing and using non-free
> software as well, they can be used for any kidn of game or program,
> including free software. Lutris actually has explicit support for quite a few
> games that are in Debian main.

Then it should be moved to main, same as OpenCL support was.

    Simon

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#100056 — Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

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> > But neither winetricks nor lutris are wrapper packages for
> > non-free programs — while they do allow installing and using non-free
> > software as well, they can be used for any kidn of game or program,
> > including free software. Lutris actually has explicit support for quite a few
> > games that are in Debian main.
> 
> Then it should be moved to main, same as OpenCL support was.

The argument raised earlier, that although these games are DFSG-free, they do
not fulfill the requirement for Debian main being self-contained holds, imho
(lutris ignores the Debian packages and installs copies of the games from
who-knows-where).

That is something that I dislike, independent of the main vs. contrib discussion.
If lutris gained support for the package system, and the ability to install free
games from the distribution's repository if available, I think it should definitely
be moved to main (I will probably open a feature request upstream for that; it might
not even be too hard to implement).

-nik

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#100058 — Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

On Thu, 2021-04-08 at 12:50 +0200, Dominik George wrote:
> (lutris ignores the Debian packages and installs copies of the games
> from who-knows-where).
How is that different from PIP, NPM, Ruby Gems, Rust Cargo etc., all in
main?

For non-developer use cases, I dislike these very much as well. But it
appears to not prevent people from adding these to main.

Regards
Stephan

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#100060 — Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

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Quoting Dominik George (2021-04-08 12:50:12)
> > > But neither winetricks nor lutris are wrapper packages for 
> > > non-free programs — while they do allow installing and using 
> > > non-free software as well, they can be used for any kidn of game 
> > > or program, including free software. Lutris actually has explicit 
> > > support for quite a few games that are in Debian main.
> > 
> > Then it should be moved to main, same as OpenCL support was.
> 
> The argument raised earlier, that although these games are DFSG-free, 
> they do not fulfill the requirement for Debian main being 
> self-contained holds, imho (lutris ignores the Debian packages and 
> installs copies of the games from who-knows-where).
> 
> That is something that I dislike, independent of the main vs. contrib 
> discussion. If lutris gained support for the package system, and the 
> ability to install free games from the distribution's repository if 
> available, I think it should definitely be moved to main (I will 
> probably open a feature request upstream for that; it might not even 
> be too hard to implement).

It is acceptable for packages to bypass Debian package management system 
- many programming languages provide tools to use their 
language-specific pakcage distribution channels, bypassing 
general-purpose package managers like apt.

If you dislike the behaviour some package then don't install it.

If you think the behaviour of some package is generally disliked by 
Debian users, then raise it as a bug against the package.

If you think certain type of behaviour should always be disapproved by 
Debian (and it is not already covered by Debian Policy), then file a 
bugreport against Debian Policy.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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#100062 — Re: ***UNCHECKED*** Packages in contrib solely because they allow using non-free software

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On 4/8/21 12:50 PM, Dominik George wrote:
> The argument raised earlier, that although these games are DFSG-free, they do
> not fulfill the requirement for Debian main being self-contained holds, 
imho
> (lutris ignores the Debian packages and installs copies of the games from
> who-knows-where).
>
> That is something that I dislike, independent of the main vs. contrib discussion.
> If lutris gained support for the package system, and the ability to install free
> games from the distribution's repository if available, I think it should definitely
> be moved to main (I will probably open a feature request upstream for that; it might
> not even be too hard to implement).


If you open a feature request, please ping me (@stephanlachnit).


Regarding Lutris: when winetricks decides to go to main, Lutris will follow.

I don't see anything that Lutris does more in terms of sideloading 
external code.


Regards,

Stephan

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