Re: Unsupported Debian [was: Re: [New maintainer] Working for De
Alex Shnitman wrote:
> I applaud you for actually doing something instead of just talking.
> In most cases it's the right thing. But I think that in this case it
> will do more damage than good, since it's a slippery slope. IMHO it's
> better not to have some packages at all, or maybe do have them a
> little later through Raphael's sponsors idea, than to start unofficial
> .deb distribution sites.
The fact is that as soon as apt was released, people started putting these
sites together. The main effect was to kill experimental -- no one uses it
anymore, instead they use their own private apt repositories. And that's
fine since such repositories are easier maintained than experimental and
more accessable to testers.
They've also been used extensively as staging areas, like for GNOME. And
they've been used for daily cvs builds of packages.
Many debian developers maintain such a repository for pre-release versions
of their own packages. I've run a couple of them myself. All this stuff gets
into debian eventually.
When apt came along, it gave us a lot of flexability, and this is just a
natural outgrowth of that. Most of the repositories you see on that web page
date back to before any rumors that new-maintainer was closed.
(Now, as to those rumors, I wish someone would speak up and make an
announcement one way or the other.)
--
see shy jo
Reply to: