RE: What Debian-qa policy for sorting packages?

[arto.astala@nokia.com]

Goal of Debian is to the best free distribution there is.
Some place more emphasis on best and some on free, but
in cases like this there is no doubt, the other package
is:
- more free
- better (Debian) maintained
- actively developed
- less buggy
so leaving this out will increase both freeness and
quality without sacrificing functionality.

If somebody really cares one can look if there is some
functionality in playmidi that is not offered by timidity.

Now a question:

  Is there a clean way (other than release notes) to
  direct the user of playmidi to installing and using
  timidity?

I know all sorts of packaging trickery can be used to
replace a package with another, but this leaves two points
open: informing the user and letting user remove the old
package.

Also a note:
  If we remove playmidi from woody could we at least
  update the description in potato to say it is going
  to be removed, please use timidity instead.

We could also use some installation script trickery to
inform the existing users of this change e.g. by an
installation message, a message requiring press of <RET>,
or mail to admin. All but the first one are contrary the
current trend of making installation and upgrade less
interactive. Probably this question should be taken up
on some other forum like -devel or -policy?

t.aa

Raphael Hertzog <rhertzog@hrnet.fr> Sat Jan 22, 2000 12:08 PM
> 
> Le Sat, Jan 22, 2000 at 09:55:31AM +0100, Thierry Laronde écrivait:
> > So my question : what is Debian-qa team's policy about this ?
> > Do you 
> > prefer to have less packages, but the *best* (freeness, 
> > usefullness, 
> > actively maintained and developed ---I personnaly prefer a usefull 
> > non-free one to a useless absolutely free beast), or do you 
> > think that 
> > we must have the largest choice, each package being 
> > maintained as good 
> > as it can be?
> 
> If someone wants to maintain a package like playmidi then we 
> let it. But
> if the package is not maintained and is quite buggy and if we 
> have other
> better alternatives, then we should simply drop it.
> 
> I suggest that you fill a bug report against ftp.debian.org 
> and ask them
> to remove the package.