Re: RFS: Requesting to add new package by non-DD
On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 11:30:27AM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 10:14, Blars Blarson wrote:
> > I do think that it should be objectivly compared with vacation before
> > Debian decides to add it to to their archives.
> >
> > At least this sounds like it won't be one of the poorly done vacation
> > clones that does mailbombs.
>
> I have a question. Is "should not be too similar to an
> existing package" a criteria for admission to Debian?
>
> There seems to be a whole pile of counter examples:
> - god knows how many shells, most backward compatible with sh.
> - kde, gnome
> - editors, eg several implementations of vi
> - www browsers
> - mail servers
> - mail clients
> - card games
> - web servers
Hahaha...
> In fact, I had privately come to the conclusion that duplicating
> existing functionality ranked well below (if indeed it ranked at
> all), criteria like licences, quality of code, quality of upstream
> support, quality of documentation, and quality of the Debian
> packaging.
So you see the problem too. Currently, our defense of stopping package
seems to be FTBFS bugs and security bugs.
> Is this wrong?
I feel it is not the best situation and any efforts possibly to
perpetuate this bad situation even further needs to be very carefully
moderated. (There are always pros and cons. Thus I did not simply say
"stopped".)
RFS means non-DD who is asking DD to sponsor, i.e., asking DD to spend
time and work for his cause. If this person becomes MIA, DD may get
stack with the package. So this is a lot to ask.
Usually this is a part of NM process. Let's think this case as a part
of NM process. Let's think that Blar's message is a friendly note that
if NM candidates wish to be a DD through this package, he needs to show
very good rationale why he is proposing to add this package.
Also, as NM candidate, it is more appreciated by DD to help manage
existing packages than creating new task of sponsoring to DD by adding
yet-another-similar-short-script-package.
I think that the keyword for NM is "contribution" to Debian.
Cheers,
Osamu
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