(2024-08-17, 17:06)basilgello Wrote: I am now blocked in this trap and either I persuade to accept my vision of Kodi, or it will get removed from Debian 13 / testing 
This outcome should be avoided at all costs - up to and including acquiescing to their requests (however inconsistent or unreasonable we may believe them to be).
Debian (and its derivatives) are the single most used/most popular Linux distributions on user-facing end devices. There are considerable benefits that come with inclusion in the default package repo (trust, ease-of-use, reliable and fast repo mirrors, default inclusion in the repos for derivative distros) that Kodi will not benefit from if we create our own unofficial repo.
By my reading of the linked threads, the Debian Multimedia Maintainers are
asking for the following:
- Do not create dozens of small language packages.
- Mention debian/dh-addon in debian/copyright.
- Acknowledge Kodi Translators and add them to debian/copyright.
- Do not mix GPL-2 software with GPL-3+ software.
You appear to have
already addressed points 2 and 3, while point 4 seems to be a non-issue since (as you
correctly pointed out) the GPL-3+ software at issue is not compiled into a binary, but rather an interpreted script.
Point 1 appears to be the last remaining issue the Debian Multimedia Maintainers have raised. Reading
the linked bug report, I see that we pursued this idea of splitting each language up into its own individual package as a way to help a user complaining about too many languages showing up in their addon interface, making it difficult for that user to navigate that menu (which, in turn, was driven by another bug where a user was trying to use Kodi and switch to their preferred language without an internet connection).
While I love the fact that we're trying to deliver the best Kodi experience we can, bug reports like - where we're solving issues for less common use cases (once a Kodi install is configured, how often are users going into this submenu where they're inconvenienced by 77 alternate languages) - should not impair our access to a major distribution.
In this specific case, it seems to me we'd be doing the greatest good for the Kodi project by ensuring we're properly included in the Debian repos (which will then flow down to all the other derivative distros). If this means packaging up all the languages into a single package and suffering the inconvenience of having 77 languages show up in a submenu of the addon interface, so be it. It may result in a slightly degraded user experience for people who frequently scroll through that addon menu as that one user highlights in their bug report, but this poor user experience can be remediated in other ways (as you helpfully indicated in a potential solution
you proposed to "mark the addons as 'uninstalled' in the user profile").
Alternatively,
the default language in Kodi is English. If the Debian Multimedia Maintainers which to see fewer packages, then perhaps we lump the several English variants into one package (English, English (Australian), English (New Zealand), English (US)), while all others are included in another?
Hopefully, they'll see the logic of your response (i.e., LibreOffice does the same thing), but if they don't, then I don't think this is a hill we should be willing to die on.
At the end of the day, it'll be better for Kodi and its users if we're included in the standard repos vs. asking some users on some distributions to fall back to using an unofficial repo.
