Bug#950994: Discourage package in contrib to install the real program via another package manager

[Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org>]

On Sun, Feb 09, 2020 at 11:47:18PM -0500, Olek Wojnar wrote:
> In summary, as snap/flatpak/etc increase in popularity I think it may be
> a good idea to have a formalized method for Debian package maintainers
> to designate authoritative equivalent sources for their packages, if
> they wish to do so.

The problem is that designating a source imply that Debian provide a
minimal set of garanties for the source.

- if the .deb includes a flatpack, we need to provide a way to
build it from source for license reason, at which point we are back to
square one.

- if the .deb download the flatpack at installation time, then how do
we make sure the file stays available during the lifetime of the release
at the time the user actually installs it ?

- what about security updates ?

If you need examples of the problems that happen, look at the
flashplugin-nonfree package.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.