On Sun, Mar 04, 2007, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: > How important are unofficial archives[1] for you? What whould you do to > support them, if you consider them important? What could be done to > integrate them into official Debian structure? As a general rule, I find unofficial archives important, but not automatically worthy of support or integration. Ideally, they should not have to exist. My platform is I believe pretty clear about merging back what I call NMUs to our infrastructure. I have also made a suggestion for a more rapid integration of mentorees' packages into our archive (the "untrusted" section). The archives you mention have specific problems, though. First, debian-unofficial/debian-multimedia have packages that are not in our archive mainly because they implement a patented technology. Debian has a policy of not shipping patended software when the patent is known to be actively enforced. While I think we are still a bit too shy about including such software, I also fear that any support given to such a project could be seen as patent infringement in complicity. I would support the idea of using Debian funds to get legal advice about what can be done (full integration into Debian, various levels of architecture integration such as BTS support, setting up a new non-US repository somewhere where patent law does not cover software...). As for backports.org, I heard the major concern for not including it in our archive was how to ensure security support, but I do not know enough about it to have a definite opinion. Regards, -- Sam.
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