I don't propose a solution, but here are some things I think relevant to
the discussion:
- For the one application that I ever run in wine, installing
msttcorefonts made the difference between whether that application
was usable under wine or not: without msttcorefonts, most text
fields just didn't show up, making the application impossible to
use.
If that were true of every application (a premise I suppose to be
false, but I wouldn't know), and if there's no other package that
can be installed to get text to show up, then Recommends or even
Depends really would be appropriate, even if that meant that wine
belongs in contrib: under these premises, it really would practically
depend on non-free components.
- If, rather, there's no other package that can be installed to get
text to show up, but it affects only *most* applications, then
Suggests may well be sufficient: the question is only whether enough
DFSG software can be run without installing msttcorefonts that it's
worthwhile having wine in the archive; how much software it can't
run is irrelevant. The package description may well need to be
changed accordingly, making it clear that this package only enables
running this small set of software, not windows software generally.
- Regarding the statement
‘Not all policy violations are serious bugs.’,
some relevant Debian policy excerpts:
Packages that do not conform to the guidelines denoted by _must_
(or _required_) will generally not be considered acceptable for
the Debian distribution.
...
These classifications are roughly equivalent to the bug severities
_serious_ (for _must_ or _required_ directive violations),
[other correspondances elided].
(The policy directive that this bug violates, cited above, uses
`must'.)
The most relevant excerpt from the
http://release.debian.org/etch_rc_policy.txt file that's already
been mentioned is that
"Recommends:" lines do not count as requirements.
(in the context of non-free dependencies). Of course, this file is
specific to the etch release, and was cited prior to the etch
release.
The relevant excerpt from the http://release.debian.org/lenny-goals.txt
file that's been mentioned is:
* No unmet recommends relations inside main
Advocate: Luk Claes
Description: Packages in main should be able to satisfy all recommend
relations in main.
Bug-Tag: recommends
State: confirmed
OTOH, the file itself only describes these as "goals", and doesn't
explicitly say that all such bugs should be marked as severity Serious
or higher. Do we have any other information as to whether such bugs
should be marked as Serious or whether it suffices to have the
specified Bug-Tag ?
- The deduction
Since Wine is all about emulating a non-free OS, it makes sense to
recommend something that's an integral part of that OS, its fonts;
undoubtedly, many applications Wine is trying to run will assume
they're there.
does not follow. Linux and the Gnu tools are all about emulating the
proprietary Unix OS, but that doesn't mean that they should
recommend non-free components, even components that one might
consider as core to Unix as Windows' fonts are to Windows, and even
if that means that many Unix applications won't run on Linux/Gnu
platform. What's important is is what software does run, not what
software doesn't run.
- If the proposition
Anyone willing to run Wine in the first place is unlikely to be
against installing anything from contrib
or the stronger proposition
everyone who runs wine is as willing to install anything from contrib
as they are software from main
were true, then it may well support putting wine in contrib, but it
wouldn't be sufficient to support allowing wine in main to recommend
or depend on software in contrib or non-free. That would require
propositions about the definition or purpose of the main/contrib
distinction.
As for whether the above propositions are true, it is relevant to
note that wine isn't exlusively for running non-Free software, just
as computers generally aren't exclusively for running non-Free
software, even if the majority of software or the majority of
Windows software were non-Free. A search on sourceforge reveals a
number of Free software packages that are written against the
Windows API.
- Unfortunately there appears not to have been any news re the
liberation fonts.
Does anyone know how to allow software to be usable without installing
either msttcorefonts or the liberation fonts, such as by using the
ttf-freefont and ttf-bitstream-vera packages already mentioned (or
ttf-dejavu) ?
pjrm.
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