eicar.com installer in Debian, and pre-upload interface to ftpmaster
Hi,
In the past years, I have done quite a bit of work with virus scanners
on Linux. The company I used to work for has funded most of amavis-ng
development before being borged. In the past years, I have found it
annoying that the eicar anti-virus testfile is not available as
aptable Debian package.
Since eicar.com has no license and eicar doesn't seem to be interested
in clarifying its license, inclusion of the eicar test string in
Debian proper is out of the question, even for non-free.
But it is possible to have an eicar-installer package in contrib which
is itself dfsg-free and downloads the non-free eicar test string from
the Web on installation.
After having that installer package rejected by ftpmaster (doesn't
make sense to have a 3 KB installer package to install a hundred bytes
of code) and been encouraged to take that issue to -devel, I would
like to hear other people's opinions.
It is my opinion that it would be a good idea to have that installer
package in Debian. Heck, if I wouldn't have that opinion, I wouldn't
have spent some of my time to build that package.
Additionally, I would like to seriously propose establishing a
pre-upload interface to ftpmaster so that a developer could learn that
he is writing a package pending rejection after upload _before_
spending time on building that package. I find it disturbingly
impolite to say "sorry, we don't want your volunteer work" _after_ the
work has been done. Especially if it is done in Mr. Troup's usual "why
did you bother me in the first place, mere mortal" style.
Greetings
Marc, somewhat mad at the moment
--
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Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Karlsruhe, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | Fon: *49 721 966 32 15
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fax: *49 721 966 31 29
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