Re: source packages and censorship
--On Fri, May 1, 1998 1:13 pm +0200 "Santiago Vila" <sanvila@unex.es> wrote:
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>
> We must ask ourselves: Why do we make .deb packages?
> Simple answer: Because our users find them useful.
>
> Remember the discussion about the purity package? Well, it was agreed
> (I think) that as long as the package had a license allowing to
> distribute it, we can make a .deb package of it.
>
> For example: Why do we package have a .deb emacs package? Because people
> find useful to dpkg -i emacs.deb to find emacs in /usr/bin.
>
> Why is there a kernel-package? Because people find it useful.
>
> Why should I package pine-src? Because many people expressed in
> debian-user they would find useful to do dpkg -i pine-src.deb and
> have the pine source in some directory.
>
> Agreed, this is not very "orthodox", but we can live with it, because pine
> will be also distributed in the traditional way in the source directory.
>
> Are we censoring this package for its contents, like we almost did with
> the "purity" package or am I missing anything?
The issue is, as I understand it, that the method for source distribution is
not widely understood. Many people (myself included) have suggested that a
future version of apt might incorporate source-fetching facilities.
deb, however, is not the appropriate format for a source distribution - and
by distributing something in source form as .deb, you are spreading a small
amount of confusion.
If I needed pine source, I might perhaps email debian-users. Some kind
person would then explain to me how to fetch a source package from my local
mirror. I would, thereafter, be able to go and get source packages whenever
I wanted. On the other hand, when source packages become available from
within dselect as .debs, I might be inclined to conclude that this is the
only form of source distribution we do, and therefore I'd never find out
about the standard method of source distribution.
The issue really is that there should be a) more documentation available to
users on downloading source and b) some automatic way (through apt?) of
downloading and cataloging available source.
Perhaps one option may be to put a 'dummy' pine package in dselect which
simply says 'Unfortunately, due to a licensing restriction, debian is unable
to distribute PINE binaries. You can get the source to this, and all other
debian packages, by following this procedure....'
I'm not saying there will never be a case for -src .deb files. I'm just
saying that when there exists a good method for distributing source, we
shouldn't start distributing source as .debs simply because .debs have a
higher user profile. We should instead try to raise the problem of the
source directory on the FTP mirrors.
Jules
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| Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey |
| Julian Bean | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | TW9 2TF *UK* |
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