Scope of debian-jr project (was: Debian for kids)
On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Keith G. Murphy wrote:
> Ben, all that is totally cool with me. I was really responding to
> things that I had seen like suggestions about making the 'pwd' command
> hard to get to; that is, things that relate directly to removing some
> administration hassles at the cost of perhaps some flexibility. I was
> thinking that if there was a lot of emphasis or work on that, that it
> perhaps shouldn't be limited to a "kids" package, broadening the
> benefit. More giving you something to think about, if you hadn't
> already, than even anything as strong as a suggestion!
Keith,
Rest assured that new packages will continue to be modified & added under
names that are suggestive of their purpose, not their target audience.
The exception, of course, will be any "task-" packages that we create,
which may bear names like:
task-debian-ages-2-to-5
which might contain packages likely to interest children in this age
range. (Don't take this as gospel, as we haven't even decided if such
a package is a good idea yet! But I can envision this as a possibility.)
As for limiting access to passwd (not pwd, as that's something entirely
different :) a number of excellent suggestions were made, some of which
might find it into a "child's sys admin guide" as tips, rather than being
codified into packages. These are specific problems that some sys admins
may have while others may not, and are therefore at the discretion of
the sys admin to implement on their own. I don't envision anything like
that being a part of Debian proper. Frankly, I don't see limiting access
to 'passwd' as being anything other than an issue when administering
systems for children, but perhaps you have a particular incident in mind?
Anyway, to bring us back to the main issue and away from implementation
details (as the discussion around passwd was a very small example,
tangential to the main focus of the project), we will make an effort to
keep our development contributing back to Debian as a whole. Where there
is overlap between a child's needs and other users' needs, I hope we can
identify it readily and involve other people in the project outside or
internal working group. At the same time, this group will necessarily
focus on child-specific issues and not get dragged off too much solving
problems that are best left to other subgroups or individual developers.
Ben
--
nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
Debian http://www.debian.org synrg@debian.org
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