why is icecat and abrowser not in debian main?

8 replies [Last post]
tonlee
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Joined: 09/08/2014

I noticed that icecat and abrowser are not in debian 8 main.
That may be the case about other pieces of software. Do we have an official reason from trisquel why that is so?
I once wrote trisquel about abrowser not beeing in debian 8 main. There was no response.
I believe it would be favorable to trisquel to get these packages into debian 8 main.
They could get more users. And thereby increase privacy.
More users could turn into more people getting to know about privacy and knowledge about trisquel.

Majin Buu
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Joined: 11/05/2016

Nor IceCat nor Abrowser are in Debian because Debian developers do not decided to add them. In Debian you can use Firefox, which is free (maybe?).

tonlee
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Joined: 09/08/2014

> The debian developers would say it is too much work
Is there a short article on how software gets part of a debian repository?
If trisquel wanted, I do not know if it is a big task, could they not get permission to get software into debian?
If I am right, debian has packages that appear to have been abandoned. They stay in debian. How is that possible? If a package is in it stays in?

onpon4
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Joined: 05/30/2012

As a general rule, Debian has a package if someone volunteers to make and maintain it. Otherwise, it doesn't.

tonlee
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Joined: 09/08/2014

Then I do not follow why trisquel does not add their privacy enhancing applications to debian. That way they will turn up in trisquel and also become part of many more gnulinux distributions.

onpon4
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Joined: 05/30/2012

Well:

1. Abrowser is basically just a rebranding of Firefox. It would be completely pointless for it to be in Debian.

2. Trisquel doesn't get updates downstream from Debian in time, so putting a Web browser in Debian and waiting for it to flow downstream would result in an old version with security patches from Canonical if they were lucky, or more likely, just an old, insecure version. Considering that Ruben is a developer of IceCat, this wouldn't make much sense.

3. It's an additional maintenance burden. The few people contributing to Trisquel are busy enough as it is.

If you want IceCat in Debian, then there's nothing stopping you from stepping up to the plate.

SuperTramp83

I am a translator!

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Joined: 10/31/2014

You can set Firefox to be as "private" as Icecat in 5 minutes. But it does take interest and knowledge. Icecat is not there because, as Onpon pointed out no one cares to maintain it.

gnulux
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Joined: 06/17/2015

SuperTramp83, I thought Icecat has some code changed, not just about:config settings. Is there a page where we can look at what Icecat does?

SuperTramp83

I am a translator!

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Joined: 10/31/2014

Not much info on the website. There is this ->

IceCat is generated from Firefox with the scripts available at http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git.

You could also try asking by mailing list.