Re: Improving the DAM-queue?
On 19/10/06 at 03:10 -0400, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> As a user, the size of Debian's archive is a major selling point -
> possibly the single most important selling point, when compared to
> other Linux distributions - and I can only see increases in its
> coverage as a Good Thing. The amount of trouble occasioned when
> I run across the rare piece of software that I need which is *not*
> packaged only underlines how good it is that almost everything *is*
> packaged. (For example, I wasted nearly a month back in the spring
> trying to get a working version of the "Player/Stage" robot simulator
> on my system - if it had been packaged, I would have been able to
> trust that it did work and get on to what I actually wanted to be doing.)
Of course, in the case you described, a package would have been great.
Feel free to file a RFP for your simulator if one has not been filed
already.
However, in many cases, free software developers tend to reinvent the
wheel quite often (so two apps can share the exact same goal and have
very similar designs, the only difference being that one is of less good
quality than the other). It's generally a bad idea to package both apps
in this case, because it increases the workload, reduces the
users-per-package ratio, etc.
Ubuntu has a different philosophy about this. They package everything
they can in the 'universe' component, importing software from e.g
apt-get.org. I wouldn't like Debian to switch to this philosophy...
> not subscribed, but please do *not* cc: me on responses, I read the web archive
Then how would you reply with the correct In-Reply-To or References
header, to avoid breaking the thread ?
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas@nussbaum.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
Reply to: