On Fri, Aug 13, 1999 at 11:02:51AM -0400, Russell Nelson wrote:
> Linuxconf uses the GPL. Is there some non-technical reason why there
> is no Debian package for Linuxconf? (I just have this idea that
There's been a package in experimental for quite some time, and there
are now packages in unstable so whenever that gets released it will
contain linuxconf (barring critical bugs and suchlike). The main
concern was making sure it would play well with the rest of the system -
looking at the changelog it seems that one of the more important things
was creating a Debian module which knows how to interact with a Debian
system.
It's the sort of tool that has great potential to toast a machine, so it
pays to be cautious.
> Debian suffers from NIH -- dare I say "RPM"?)
There is a Debian package of RPM, and Debian contains tools which
support the installation of RedHat packages on Debian systems :-) .
Really, all it depends upon is some developer deciding that it's a
worthwhile thing to package and making the effort to do so. Any NIH
you're seeing probably has as much to do with people already having
solutions (eg, I would guess most Debian maintainers don't *need* a tool
like linuxconf) or not having seen the relevant packages (you'll
probably find that a high proportion of Debian maintainers spend more
admin time on Debian than on other systems) as anything else.
If there's something you'd like packaged, you can always mail a
suggestion to debian-devel (and probably also wnpp@debian.org so it goes
in the list of Wanted, Needed & Prospective Packages) to see if you can
attract interest, or even go ahead and do it yourself (barring the odd
stall in new-maintainer processing :-) ).
--
Mark Brown mailto:broonie@tardis.ed.ac.uk (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFS http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/
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