Re: Unofficial repositories on 'debian' domains
On 03/05/2012 03:40 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> But before getting there, the question is whether the existence of the
> website (and its popularity) poses problem to Debian reputation and/or
> to the activity of official Debian multimedia packaging. I think this is
> a question for the Debian Multimedia Maintainers (as in
> <pkg-multimedia-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>) to answer. If they
> see a problem with debian-multimedia.org, we should get in touch with
> the website maintainers and solve the issue.
>
I do think this website hurts Debian, and its user community.
Let me explain, it's based on my past *user* experience.
Years ago, I was fooled into thinking that d-m.o was there only to
address licensing issues, and bring packages that couldn't go in
Debian. But d-m.o does a lot more, like re-packaging things that
are already in Debian, and working very well there.
It's not clearly written in d-m.o that it can screw your Debian
installation, particularly when upgrading from version N to version
N+1 of Debian with d-m.o package installed. But I've seen multiple
instances of this issue over the years, on both desktop and server
side. It is *extremely* easy to get confused, and think that the
issue is in Debian itself, when in fact, it's really d-m.o who
fu**ed-up your system. Users will *not* get it, I'm sure of that.
The issue with the donation thing is that d-m.o author could be
seen as a savior, who brings things not in Debian, and thus would
deserve money (as a user, I was fooled into thinking this way in
the past). But the reality is completely different, and I now do
think that the Debian multimedia team would deserve the money a
100 times more than d-m.o author. Yet, they don't get the respect
from the community, and even less the support (this thread is
a proof of it).
Now, I'm really not sure what we can do about the above. Maybe
absolutely nothing...
Everyone has the rights to make alternative (bad) repositories
and advertize (well) about them. Maybe politely asking to mention
better that this is unofficial could be done, but I experienced
the above fully understanding what I was doing, and the fact
that it wasn't official repos. I don't think a bigger mention
of the fact it was unofficial would have helped me in any ways.
Just my 2 cents as a (past, and unhappy) d-m.o user,
Thomas
P.S: Thumbs up to the debian multimedia team for their work
in Squeeze, it is a brilliant desktop thanks to them.
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