Why is the virtualbox package in contrib and not in the main Debian repository?

Unix & Linux Asked on January 2, 2022

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product
for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an
extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise
customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely
available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General
Public License (GPL) version 2. See "About VirtualBox" for an
introduction.

So why is the virtualbox package in contrib and not in the main Debian repository?

debian virtualbox

One Answer

This is explained in the package’s debian/copyright file, which is installed as /usr/share/doc/virtualbox/copyright:

This package is not part of the Debian operating system. It is in the "contrib" area of the Debian archive because it requires a non-free compiler (Open Watcom) to build the BIOS. Upstream provides pre-built BIOS images which is used instead.

This fails the following requirement on packages in main:

the packages in main must not require or recommend a package outside of main for compilation or execution

Since the package’s license meets the DFSG, it is distributed in contrib.

Answered by Stephen Kitt on January 2, 2022

Why is the virtualbox package in contrib and not in the main Debian repository?

One Answer

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