Re: Node.js and it's future in debian

[Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org>]

On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 05:28:29PM -0400, Patrick Ouellette wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 05:13:09PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> > 
> > Drat.  I forgot about APRS. APRS has become fairly popular among hams, so much 
> > so that it now comes built-in to several radios, and even HTs (Handy-Talkies).
> > 
> > APRS is a system for location reporting.  It's also very commonly used to 
> > track experimental weather balloons at high altitudes, because apparently GPS 
> > stops working at around 30,000 feet.  [The original high-altitude MIT balloon 
> > launch that many others have duplicated uses APRS, and I know of other groups 
> > using it for this purpose also.]  APRS is also commonly used by hams to track 
> > themselves and/or their cars and loved ones as they drive around.
> > 
> > The rigs used in cars likely aren't running a Linux OS, but the base station 
> > nodes that receive and report the APRS traffic probably are, and as Debian has 
> > been friendly to hams it's one of the more likely to be used there.
> 
> Continue to say DRAT!  The handwriting is on the wall.  Very few have come
> out even marginally supporting the ham radio claim other than myself.
> 
> Frankly, given the lack of response from the Debian ham community I'm inclined 
> to no longer maintain the ax25 packages and let them drop from Debian.
> 
> Three other people are listed as uploaders on ax25-apps: Jaime Robles,
> Hamish Moffatt, and Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan.  I haven't heard from
> any of them.  Haven't heard from our QSSTV supporter either (Steve Kostecke).

Sorry Pat, I'm pretty much MIA and wasn't aware of this renewed
discussion until you Cced me.

I think it's pretty poor of the node.js developers to trample on an
established name, especially when "node" doesn't even seem to be
particularly descriptive of their application. 

Secondly if node.js is usually just used via #!, I'm not sure why it's in 
$PATH at all - why not in /usr/lib?

Nonetheless the numbers are against the ham radio case. I personally
haven't used (ax)node and I'm not able to confirm that these complicated
scenarios you mention exist. If we added a big preinst warning to
(ax)node with a chance to abort installation, would that be sufficient 
warning?

Ubuntu hasn't resolved this either FWIW. They probably have fewer
hamradio users than we do.

Hamish