Force apt-get to ignore dependencies?

[Benjamin Scott]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
<rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:
>> IANAL, but I believe that's an open question.  It prolly doesn't
>> comply with the license document, but license documents do not have
>> the force of law (much to the dislike of software publishers
>> everywhere).  I haven't agreed to the terms of the license.
>
> Well, it's a license, not a contract. So it..., er, `grants you license'
> to do things--like distribute.

  I haven't looked at the Flash license for Linux, but if it's like
most licenses, you're not supposed to distribute it, install it more
than once, copy it for your own use, or even look at it closely.
Reverse engineering (such as what would be needed to determine which
files to rip out of the distribution kit, <wink>) is typically
declared forbidden.  Fortunately, again, licenses don't have force of
law by themselves

  Debian does the download-on-demand thing to distance themselves from
claims of copyright infringement, I'm sure.  Since copyright *is* law,
that's something to be a lot more wary of.

  But if I were trying to defend what d-m.org does (and I sort-of am),
I'd point out that Flash installation kit is available for free, and
is available for download from a public server without going though
any license agreement check.  Is simply changing the format so it can
be used a violation of copyright, or would that be "fair use"?  In
some jurisdictions (not the US, AFAIK) (maybe France?) it's explicitly
allowed.  Here it's a question for a court to decide (unless there's
existing case law addressing it, which there may well be).

  Do I expect Debian/SPI to volunteer to be the test case for that?  No.

> I'm just thinking, it makes sense to me that Debian does it
> the way that they do ...

  I don't blame Debian for not wanting to wander around in a legal
minefield, but that doesn't make the problems with
"flashplugin-nonfree" go away.  In the meantime, I'm trying to get
someone else's packaging of Flash which doesn't have those problems.
(Or rather, I was.  I've since given up.)

>> > ...  it extracts the .so from the tarball ...
>>
>>   Okay, so it's ripping the files from Adobe's executable installer
>> kit, rather than running same.
>
> It's really just downloading and unpacking a tarball, and the only file
> in the tarball is libflashplayer.so, so I'm not sure what there is to `run'.

  Hmm.  So it is.  In the past, to do things manually, I remember
downloading the Adobe Flash distribution and running an executable
installer component.  The name "install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz"
would seem to corroborate that.  Presumably something changed.

  Hmm again.  Okay, so I've just found something which makes me even
less thrilled with Debian's approach (although this may be a new thing
Adobe is doing so not really Debian's fault).  Anyway, today at least,
Adobe provides a .deb package:

	http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_10_linux.deb

  Seems to install fine.  I'll test it when I get back to my X console
at home.  :)

> Yeah--I get your issue, now: which isn't so much an issue
> with how it's packaged or the trustworthiness of the source
> so much as that Debian's just not pushing out regular upgrades
> whenever upstream does (which actually seems to fit with their
> policies...).

  You're correct in that I have no issue with trustworthiness.

  I'm unhappy the installation is not a managed package.  Easy updates
is the big part of that, but the other things count, too.  Having
every the package manager track all one's installed files makes a lot
of little things easier.

  Again, I don't blame Debian for not wanting to; I'm just unhappy
with the result.

> The only work-around I know to suggest is to just install
> the package from lenny-backports and regularly update it
> by running "update-flashplugin-nonfree --install",

  That is indeed what I've fallen back upon.  :-/

> Personally, I decided to follow your advice on handling
> people who don't want you to work with them.

  I wish I could.  I sincerely wish I could.  Alas, I cannot escape
from Flash -- too many things I need to use to conduct the business of
my life depend on Flash, much to my disgust.  :-(

-- Ben