Re: post-inst message for autodock
(CCing -science because I think this applies to all fields of science
and should see wider discussion)
For -science, the issue is about user registration (usually before
download, or on program startup) which is an important tool for
scientific software authors to plead for further funding. It was
proposed that the autodock package (where the registration
page/reminder/whatever was patched out by Debian) be changed to show a
debconf note to users upon installation instead.
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 07:18:09PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> Le Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 07:30:57PM +0200, Steffen Moeller a écrit :
>
> > Stefano, would you agree to that? We could also add a note to the
> > startup of the application to show that text and optionally show
> > this only upon the first invocation of autodock/autogrid.
>
> I think that the problem we are trying to solve is not limited to
> autodock/autogrid: we need an efficient way to tell our users how to support
> the software they use. This covers the most simple examples like direct
> financial support for general purpose application (the famous PayPal buttons),
> the case of AutoDock/AutoGrid that need to evaluate the size of their user
> base, and the case of other software that collect user feedback for their grant
> renewals (EMBOSS some time ago, TM4 this year, ???)
>
> We definitely can dedicate a page on our web site, that lists the software
> whose existence is tied to a proper acknowledgement of their use. We can also
> keep an URL to the software's web page that contains instructions on how to
> support it. Lastly, if there is a volunteer to write an ad-hoc program, we
> could provide to our users an automated way to search for the recently used
> applications on their software, that need support. I think that the current
> solutions of displaying Debian-specific messages at installation or startup
> time are potential source of bugs or information loss, for instance in cases
> where interactivity is limited (clusters, computer clouds, installations
> performed by a third person???).
>
> It seems that for AutoDock, relevant information is in the download area:
> http://autodock.scripps.edu/downloads/autodock-registration Stefano, do you
> think that you could make a more general page about how to support AutoDock? I
> wonder if the users will not miss the point if they already installed our
> package but are lead to a pre-download page.
>
> As a side note, maybe ???support??? is not a well-chosen keyword, since there can
> be ambiguity about who supports who. But I am not a native speaker, so I do not
> know what else to use. Or maybe we can keep all the information in the same
> place and display in a ???Get/Give??? manner?
My proposal would be to add an inofficial control file field like
XB-Registration: http://foo.org/register which could be exposed in the
task pages as a "Register as a user for this package" link on the task
pages.
If this proves successful with users, upstream authors and developers,
we can propose it to Debian at large.
What do others think?
Michael
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