chromium not in Squeeze: a bit of communication needed?
I've been following the chromium-browser saga a bit, who has ended up
with the removal of the package from testing [1,2]. While I'm a
chromium-browser user myself, and hence I'm saddened of seeing it go,
I'm not here to question the choice as I'm sure it's been made as the
right one and that it hasn't been an easy one to make.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2010/09/msg00582.html
[2] http://www.iuculano.it/en/linux/debian/chromium-browser-removed-from-testing/
Still I think we need, as Debian, to communicate about that choice. As
you can imagine, I particularly care about that as sooner or later
someone will ask me « why Debian doesn't ship Chromium? », and I'd like
to know the right answer to that question, so that I can provide it,
rather than offering my personal view only :-)
That's all I care about. [3]
>From the exchange on -release, I *guess* that the reason is that
Chromium 5 is not meant to be supportable security-wise and at the same
time that it's too late to get Chromium 6 into Squeeze. If this is the
case, I welcome explicit comments in that direction by the security and
release teams. If there are other reasons, please let me know.
Such an answer will be even more useful as, say, a kind of "public
statement" toward upstream, explaining why their practices are not
something that suite the quality requirements we have in Debian.
Many thanks in advance to all involved teams, and in particular to
Giuseppe who put a shitload of work in the packaging.
Please help me out in answering tricky questions like this one!
Cheers.
[3] A question you might have at this point is: "why you bother about
Chromium and not other packages?". Well, I do bother about all
packages and I'm just trying to anticipate questions I'll might be
asked as soon as Squeeze get released. For instance and for the same
reason, I've proposed just yesterday to mention the removal of Plone
from Squeeze, and the maintainer has kindly agreed to explain the
reasons in the Squeeze release notes. So, I'm not special casing
anything here, and I encourage you to point me to other similar
cases.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Caposella .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams
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