RE: Who should package&host a product?
On 17-Jan-2001 Wesley W. Terpstra wrote:
> Hi, I work for a company which does concurrent development for *nix as well
> as windows. For the *nix version of our project we plan to include the
> debian package format in our official release. We've already set up the
> building of lintian-happy packages for our software, and I wanted to enquire
> as to the most politically correct distribution scheme.
>
nice to see people playing well with others (-:
> First, some details about the project:
>
> The project uses some packages that are not packaged in debian and some that
> were inadaquately packaged. We've repackaged these ourselves.
>
this part is the part that concerns me. If there is a problem with the way a
package was designed, the maintainer should be given a chance to fix it.
If you absolutely MUST use your own versions of Debian packages, you have no
choice but to release the software on your own site. Helix has this problem in
part because they maintain their own hacked gtk deb.
>
> So, what is the debian-correct method here?
>
assuming your package becomes 100% debian native
> Should we just keep our packages to ourselves like helixcode was/is doing?
you could ...
> Should we find an existing maintainer to dupload the debs we feed him?
> Should one of our developers apply to become a NM?
>
either of these is a good choice. If a debian developer uses your packages,
then maintaining them is easy. However if no one in Debian uses the packages,
you maintaining them would be better. A deb should be maintained by someone
who actually uses the software. This has always been one of the reasons Debian
is technically superior -- the work is done by people who care and are affected
by the quality. The maintainer of package foo often works somewhere that foo
is used, if foo breaks he will hear about it and possibly suffer himself.
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