Re: If Debian wants to grow, let it grow. Or: King James reading Anarchy FAQ
On Sun, Mar 21, 1999 at 22:38 -0600, Jeff Licquia wrote:
> [unlurking twice in one day - perhaps I should just participate and be done with
> it. :-]
Ditto: it's becoming a habit :)
>
> Dave Swegen wrote:
>
> > As I see it packages fall into one of three categories:
> >
> > 1) Programs
> > 2) Data associated with programs (ie King James, fortune, websters)
> > 3) Data associated with linux/debian (FAQs, HOWTOs, policy manuals)
> >
> > (I could of course be entirely wrong about those categories, but I really
> > can't be arsked to trawl through the 2.5k+ packages that we already have)
> >
> > IMHO I think this is as good a set of criteria as any other, and ensures a
> > modicum of relevancy. Debian is growing fast enough as it is w/o having
> > every single piece of use{full|less} info on the net debianised and bunged
> > into the dist.
>
> As I see it, we already have three categories:
>
> 1. main
> 2. contrib
> 3. non-free
>
> If we agree that things like the Bible and the Anarchist FAQ don't belong in
> Debian proper, why can't they be moved into contrib? That way, the contrib CD
> can grow to a gazillion CDs if we want, and users aren't forced to buy them all
> just to get Debian installed.
Two reasons why not: 1) See Hamish's reply and 2) I don't want to have to
buy a gazillion CDs just to get to the things that fall into the categories
I outlined above, which in my infallible arrogance I believe currently
gives a high usefull to useless ratio :)
>
> As a Christian, I find it handy that the Bible is just an "apt-get" call away,
> but I'm not going to pretend that it has anything to do with the proper running
> of an OS. If we accept that "information necessary for the proper running of a
> relatively feature-rich OS" should be the criteria, then programs and necessary
> data that provide services (like spellcheckers and "fortune" programs) could be
> accepted into main, while other interesting but not necessary vital data (like
> the Bible or the Anarchist FAQ) could be put in contrib.
If the bible didn't have an asscociated program, IMHO it wouldn't go in.
The line has to be drawn somewhere, or else the distro (ie main, contrib,
non-free and non-US) is going to get so utterly humungous as to be scary...
If there is enough demand for these sort of packages it might be an idea to
make either a completely new category for them (non-relevant perhaps? ;),
and stick it in a different tree/host (to cut down the load the poor
mirrors would have to cope with...).
Cheers
Dave
--
Dave Swegen | Debian 2.0 on Linux i386 2.2.3
<dave@recursive.prestel.co.uk> | PGP key available on request
<dsw@debian.org> | Linux: The Choice of a GNU Generation
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