Re: lintian & linda
On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
There are a lot differences between linda and lintian, especially the
programming language.
A very important difference. This might result in several further applications
doing the very same job (more or less) for several other programming languages
(Ruby, why not C, C++ or even FORTRAN).
My impression was that applications are written for *users* not for programmers.
Mentioning the different programming languages as a difference of the applications
is the wrong point of view.
Which is if course a big point if you consider
programmers can only help in one but not the other.
Hmmm - I wonder whether rewriting an application wouldn't take more time than
doing the usual things in free software:
1) Write bug reports.
2) Provide patches - well a programmer who is skilled enouth to rewrite
a complete application is definitely skilled enouth to learn a quite
common programming language in a shorter time than the rewrite would
take - at least good enouth to provide patches.
This standard question is annoying and unneeded.
In fact you are right, because discussing this question does not lead to
any reasonable result. Everybody is free to spend his time as he likes and
there will be people in the future who will continue in rewriting applications
just because they have other preferences in the choice of programming
language or just a different toolkit. On the other hand why not educating
people that they should focus on their users instead on their programming
preferences from time to time?
There is no point in
deciding for one or the other package. And this is a quite new trend that
debian community start to think they have the right to pick.
Sorry, we have to pick. Imaginge a maintainer has time to build a package
of exactly one application which fulfills a certain purpose. Furthermore
imagine there are three applications which fulfill this purpose available.
A person with limited time frame has to pick one. I would consider it as good
style if he would also give reasons for the decision why he picked this
application and I really hope that the choice of programming language
would not be the main reason (except if he has to leave out an application
which is written in a language which requires non-free tools - this is a
reason to stay away from certain applications).
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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