RE: Renaming GNUstep packages

["Julian Mehnle" <lists@mehnle.net>]

Evan Prodromou wrote:
> > But hey, I don't expect much compliance given that you've
> > ignored the pleas for less namespace pollution back in 2002
> > when you were asked to do so in bug #150181. :P
>
> So, maybe it'd help if you explained what you mean by "pollution"
> the Debian package namespace.

The Debian package namespace is like parking lots: in general it's first
come, first served.  But as with parking lots, it's not first come, first
served *only*.  As there are some potential parking lots that are just too
public to be actually used as parking lots (like right in front of the
city hall entry), there are some package names that are just too generic
to belong to any specific package (like "terminal").

For a more correct and more technical explanation of the concept of
"namespace pollution", see any serious book on software design.

It's just of no *real* use to anyone (not even to users of your package)
to give a non-general package a general name.  It just confuses (and
annoys) a lot of people.  Yes, there are some historical exceptions (e.g.
"diff"), but these are widely tolerated because there hadn't been any
serious alternatives for a long time.