Re: real LSB compliance
>>"Sam" == Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> writes:
>>>>> "Manoj" == Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:
>>>> "Sam" == Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> writes:
Sam> First I suspect that it is only for rc.d links. Secondly,
Sam> why are we supporting LSB if not for our users?
Manoj> If the product is free software, we shall already have
Manoj> decent, conforming packaging for it. Now, if you are
Manoj> talking about non-free software, that can never actually be
Manoj> part od Debian, well, then. How much effort do we really
Manoj> want to spend here? (Were we not already discussing
Manoj> throwing out non-free from our archive sites?)
Sam> The assertion that we will have all free software packaged in Debian
Sam> is ludicrous; we may have much of it packaged, and we should work to
Sam> package any that we do not have , but there may exist LSB free
Sam> software not in Debian. Particularly for fast-moving targets it may
Sam> be better for our users to use LSB packages than native debs.
I am afraid I am not that naive. The LSB has been specifically
targ4etted to the ISV's (and the shakers and the movers behind it wo
were at USENIX admitted as much). I am fully convinced that
binary-only software shall be the bulk of the benficiaries of the
LSB: just because free software can be packaged to it does not mean
it shall be.
It is also a matter of diminishing rate of return on effort:
there are enough people to do a drive-by packaging using JoeyH's
excellent helper packages that any interesting piece of software shall
not languish in the wings -- as long as it is free. And even a hasty
packaging, thanks to helper tools, is likely to be a better fit into
Debian policy than most LSB packages shall be.
Sam> More over, when I agreed to be a Debian developer I agreed to follow
Sam> the social contract as written while working on Debian projects. That
Sam> includes the part of the contract that acknowledges that non-free
Sam> software is useful to our users. Until the social contract is
Sam> changed, I will conduct myself accordingly and will expect other
Sam> developers to do the same. I do agree that sacrificing implementation
Sam> quality is a valid tradeoff and that we should not do so to support
Sam> non-free software.
In your idealism, I think you are failing to take into account
the potential realities of this situation (as I pointed ot, there is
a very real scenario that the LSB shall lead to tarnishing Debian
reputation for excellence, and decrease popularity, rather than
increasing it. You may disagree with the likelihood of that
occurring, but it _is_, in my opinion, an equally probable outcome).
I contend that rather than making it easier for Oracle to
deploy on Debian, our users are better served by promoting Postgresql
(I just bought the nice book on it from O'Reilly).
Indeed, if we take effort away from the promotion of librè
software to facilitate non-free soffware, we are probably breaking
the social contract. However, I don't want to be nit picky.
manoj
--
"Card readers? We don't need no stinking card readers." Peter da
Silva (at the National Academy of Sciences, 1965, in a particularly
vivid fantasy)
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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