Re: Bug#150551: ITP: wmcoincoin -- Stupid dockapp for browsing DaCode sites news and board
On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@bluecherry.net> wrote:
> bzip2 was packaged because someone thought it would be a useful thing to
> have in Debian. And it is, lots of people use it. We're not trying to
> keep useful things out of the distribution. However, I'm not convinced
> this thing is actually useful for any real purpose.
You mean, "useful for you"?
> slowing down the release process while people try to fix silly bugs in
> packages that nobody uses, rather than worrying about the not so silly
> bugs in packages people do use.
Look at woody's release. Yes, we had lots of bugs in "silly applications"
(garchiver and gendoc come to my mind, as I actually worked a bit on those
bugs) but the actual release delays were libc (security hole until the last
minute) and the security infrastructure. While the people are working both
on libc and security infrastructure did wonderful work, that does mean that
silly packages do *not* delay the release. The simple reason is that silly
packages can be easily removed by the release manager if they have RC bugs.
Libc and X can't.
> If the software is only useful to a small handful of people, then those
> people should have the software. If it's useful outside that small group,
> it probably fits well in Debian.
How many people? 30? 40? 100? 1000? 10k?
If you're worried about the Packages.gz file, you could easily create
a "sub-distribution". Ditto for the CDs. Woody is *already* a bit too
much CDs to buy (8 just for the binaries? That means 16 for binaries+sources).
But Debian's chief recommendation has never been "Debian: One CD for All
Your Needs" but "apt-get install <Foo>. It just works".
Personally, anything which can make the "apt-get install <foo>" advice even
truer than it is (which means both higher quality and more packages) is
good.
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