Re: Bug#12509: fdutils: Data not belongs to description
Hi,
[Moving this over to policy]
I think I agree with Anthony here; ultimately, current policy
gives the maintainer a great deal of leeway in deciding what is or
is not acceptable for the description; and far from feeling that
authour information is useless, I think we should be making it a
matter of policy to always include author information for all
packages.
We should be congratulating Anthony for being the first,
rather then castigating him for including the information.
manoj
>>"Anthony" == Anthony Fok <foka@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca> writes:
Anthony> 1. It gives the Author the proper credit. (This is
Anthony> important.)
Anthony> 2. It better identifies the package, especially in case of
Anthony> similar package name (e.g. mtx and m-tx)
Anthony> 3. Again, helps differentiate the package, for example, a
Anthony> while ago, MusiXTeX and MusixTeX were two very similar
Anthony> programs by different main authors (Daniel Taupin and Andreas
Anthony> Egler)
Anthony> 4. Some authors are well-known, e.g. Larry Wall. (Ah, you
Anthony> mean the Perl written by Larry Wall?) Again, it helps
Anthony> identify the package, and some users might be interested to
Anthony> try out other programs from Larry Wall. (i.e. patch, rn?
Anthony> etc.) (Okay, this point may sound lame, but hey, I did try
Anthony> do something like that when I was a complete newbie and
Anthony> wanted to learn more.)
Anthony> Likewise, other fields such as upstream source, home page,
Anthony> etc. accomplish the same objectives. The Home Page
Anthony> especially, because the user can look up more information
Anthony> about the program before installing it.
Anthony> I consider this bug merely an aesthetic issue. Why are you
Anthony> guys so picky on this? What's wrong with providing more
Anthony> information? It's not like I put a 100-line description!
Anthony> Give me a break! (Yes, I'm sorry to say this, but I am
Anthony> getting annoyed.)
Anthony> Rather, why not file bugs against packages in which the
Anthony> description is way too terse (i.e. some one-liners)? New
Anthony> users may have trouble deciding whether to install that
Anthony> package due of lack of information.
Anthony> If there are no other objections, may I close the bug? Thank
Anthony> you.
Please do.
--
"Hold still while I flame you." Karl Lehenbauer
Manoj Srivastava <url:mailto:srivasta@acm.org>
Mobile, Alabama USA <url:http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Reply to: