[Popcon-developers] Bug#414340: package description refers to "us", Debian developers
On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 08:02:27PM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > I disagree with the removal of the Debian project branding from the
> > description. Popularity-contest is an official Debian project and this
> > package report to the Debian project and to no one else.
> >
> > The term distribution here is incorrect because if you install this
> > popcon package on another distribution it will still report to Debian
> > and not to the other distribution developers.
>
>
> The point is to make it easy to derived distribution to use our
> packages with as less modifications as possible. This is not losing
> our identity or whatever but rather what seems to me as sane
> collaboration.
I contend that:
1) Your change force more derived distributions to make changes to the package.
2) You could achieve a better result without changing the
description inside the binary package, by generating the description
at build time from a template.
3) This cause us to lose your identity.
1) Your change force more derived distribution to make changes to the package.
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1.1) Introduction
Basically there are two kind of debian-based distributions:
a) those that does not have a popcon server.
b) those that have a popcon server.
I contend that the set a) is much larger than set b).
1.2) debian-based distributions without a popcon server:
In that case the popularity-contest will still be configured to report
to Debian, but then the sentence:
The popularity-contest package sets up a cron job that will
periodically anonymously submit to the distribution developers
statistics about the most used packages on this system.
will be false so the Debian-based distributions will have to change the
description. The same for:
This information influences decisions such as which packages should
go on the first distribution CD.
1.3) debian-based distributions with a popcon server:
The distributions have to change the package to report to their own
server anyway.
Furthermore, in that case it is quite likely that the paragraph
This information influences decisions such as which packages should
go on the first distribution CD. It also helps improving future
versions of the distribution so that the most popular packages are
the ones which are installed automatically for new users.
will be totally false for that distribution (for example it provides a
single DVD), so the distribution will have to change it.
1.4) Conclusion:
All distributions of kind a) and most distributions of kind b) need to
change the description. With the previous description, only distribution
of kind b) had to, but in all case kind b) have to change the package
anyway.
2) You could achieve a better result without changing the description
------------------------------------------------------------------
inside the binary package, by generating the description at build time
----------------------------------------------------------------------
from a template.
----------------
Instead of aiming at a one-size-fit-all description, there could be
a setting in the source package that allow to control which description
will end up in the binary package.
Since distributions of type b) will have to rebuild the package anyway,
they could easily change this setting so that another description
template is used.
3) This cause us to lose your identity.
------------------------------------
popularity-contest upstream is Debian. There is no reason to hide the
fact. The general rules with credits in free softwares is to simply
keep the credit the way upstream put them and this is fair enough. So
if we strip Debian of all Debian credit, we won't get any credit.
This is a sure way users of Debian derived distribution never get aware
of Debian. We need to advertise our contribution to free softwares.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large blue swirl here.
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