Re: [Pkg-javascript-devel] Node.js and it's future in debian
Patrick Ouellette <pouelle@debian.org> writes:
> I'm more than a bit disappointed that this will be the second time a ham
> radio tool in Debian is forced to use a name the wider Linux ham
> community does not use. No one seems to be considering the issues or
> complications caused to the ham users. I've heard the assertion that
> the ham users are a "smaller" community, but I have not seen the
> numbers. It seems the issue has come down to a popularity contest, and
> since the Node.js folks don't understand ham radio the ham radio people
> will be made to bear the burden of the change.
Speaking solely for myself, the primary reason why it seems reasonable to
me to just rename the ham radio node program is that it's in /usr/sbin and
not meant to be regularly run directly by users, but rather to be
configured once and then largely left alone. That means that coping with
a non-standard name is quite a bit easier than with a program that's meant
to be run regularly by end users.
The place where the popularity comes into play for me is in weighing the
impact on our users for calling the Node.js node program something else.
My *default* opinion, when there's a package already in Debian and another
comes along with a binary with the same name, is to just shrug and say
"first come, first serve" and tell the second group to call their program
something different. It's the popularity and the expectations of our
users that in this case I think warrant looking further into other
possible solutions. But I wouldn't extend that to say that the ham radio
folks should obviously "lose."
If the ham radio node program were also a user interface routinely used by
end users instead of used as part of system configuration, this would be a
much harder discussion. Thankfully, that doesn't appear to be the case.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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