Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Yes, I'm aware of that, but the discussion was about collaboration and that was simply a suggestion that the split could be done by GNU so that Debian could use pristine tarballs. This might be simple way for the GNU project to contribute in the collaboration efforts.

> I'm not sure how many actually used software packages non-free contains
> these days, at least I currently use it only for firmware and GNU
> documentation. I additionally use contrib for some games (Doom variants,
> mainly).
>
> I don't think most of contrib is considered a problem by the FSF due to
> the way they consider programs and data separate concerns

What I haven't been able to find is a clear definition of what is allowed in non-free and if there is a process for things to enter non-free. Of course if the Debian project does define a formal process and criteria of when project qualifies and when it should be retired, then it becomes a bit meaningless to argue that non-free should not be considered part of Debian. So defining such a process is probably contentious. The only thing I have found so far is:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s...

> (this excludes
> the "installer for a non-free program" type packages in contrib, such as
> the Adobe flash plugin etc).

Once gnash/lightspark/whatever implement the 'to be defined/expected' functionality, I would wish for a process to have that installer removed from the debian archives as obsolete.