RE: Actual usage of different packages..
-----Original Message-----
From: Vince Mulhollon [mailto:vlm@norlight.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 11:05 AM
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Actual usage of different packages..
>1) Bad logic. Its not a sufficient reason to dispose of a minority, merely
>because they are the minority. (They do not conform to the majority, thus
>we must eliminate them to "purify" and "cleanse" our distribution of
>"undesirables", or place them in a special sub-distribution concentration
>camp)
I think you misunderstood my post - I was proposing a multi-part survey - 1)
what do you use 2) how much do you like it 3) have you tried alternatives
foo and bar.
If the answers for a product were 1) I use foo 2) its 'okay' 3) no I haven't
tried these well liked alternatives.
then the individual will have additional information to make a decision.
The majority of people don't cycle through all of the alternative packages
and try each one, they look a bit until they find one they don't hate, and
then stick with it. There may (and often are) programs that better meets
the users needs, but the effort to find the correct software is often more
than the user can take the time to expend. This is a large reason why side
by side comparisons of a large number of products in the same category are
popular (or the comparison of a relative new comer to an 'industry
standard').
This is also useful for those maintainers who are overloaded and maintaining
more packages than they have a reasonable amount of time to manage. If they
must choose to drop maintenance of a package, then they would likely prefer
to drop the maintenance of the few users/low interest package then the many
user/high interest package.
>2) If you're curious about the statistics anyway, see
>http://packages.debian.org/stable/misc/popularity-contest.html
thanks for the link
>3) The "DFSG market" is already extremely efficient at sorting out which
>programs suck and which are cool. No need to install artificial "controls"
>on the market. Things that suck are orphaned and removed.
agreed, but I don't think that my proposal would be an 'artificial control',
it is just 'more and better information'.
>4) No need for holy wars. <scarcasm mode> More debian users running the
>"popularity contest" run vi and kde, therefore lets remove emacs and gnome
>from the distribution, I'm sure there will be no arguements at all over
>that action </scarcasm mode>
I didn't propose a holy war, just more and better information for the
producers and the consumers.
>5) How are you going to stop developers from reinstalling banished
>software? Lets assume, for the sake of arguement, that "someone" has the
>guts to think their opinion is more important than everyone elses, and they
>remove another developer's package. At one point, the developer who
>packaged that software thought it was worth uploading. How are you going
>to stop that developer from uploading it again?
Hmm... I don't recall any calls for banishment - just a survey to gather
information. I have no interest in impinging on someones freedom, I just
would like to give them better information.
Apparently my statement of 'could be dropped' was poorly worded. What I
meant was, that if there are packages that maintainers are maintaining
because they are trying to provide a service to other Free Software users
and developers- then if the package is found to have few users, and those
users are using it because of a lack of awareness of good alternatives.
Then it may be in the developers interest to switch to the maintenance of a
more 'valuable' piece of software to the community. I did not intend this
to be interpreted as 'forcing' the maintainer to drop any software that they
are maintaining, if they want to maintain something that others find to have
little value - that is there prerogative. However, given the limited time
resources that almost everyone has, it the maintainer ends up in a time
crunch, they'll likely want to devote their resources to the more useful or
desirable software.
Thanks for your time,
Tom M.
TomM@Pentstar.com
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