On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 23:24 +0000, Beaky, The WACS Man wrote:
> For instance, as things stand, I protect almost all files with mode 660
> to the group of package administrators which causes lintian to get very
> upset. I think that is the right thing to do and that the icons,
> thumbnails and documentation should not be available for all users on
> the system to read. That obviously runs counter to the normal
> permissions mentality reflected in the lintian process.
We can certainly talk about that sort of thing :-)
Why would you want to restrict local users from reading files which are
freely downloadable?
> > i think "team" is a bit of a misnomer here, as this list is more of a
> > discussion area for the common set of problems that one has with web
> > application packaging. that said, you might still find someone here
> > interested in sponsoring or co-maintaining your package (i'm not
> > volunteering though). failing that, you could also try the debian-mentors
> > list.
>
> OK, I'll hope that someone will choose to get back to me over the next
> few days with some interest.
I think that debian-mentors is probably a better place to start, other
than for discussion related to packaging a web application specifically.
While it's desirable to have up/downstream separation there's no real
problem with not having it, especially if you already have the package
in Ubuntu.
Sure, it's nice to have a packager who is separate from the developer,
but it's plenty common enough to have the roles combined, too.
> Given it's one of the biggest markets on the internet, I'm surprised
> that no one has addressed this arena with free software previously (at
> least not to my knowledge). I know a great many people sweep their
> activities in this area under the carpet, but I really hope someone will
> have the courage to come forward and help.
I'm sure only the people involved in the industry could say, but I doubt
that it fits so straightforwardly into the 'making the world a better
place' ethos of many free software developers.
> Right now this is a very important part of the internet as a whole where
> the free software community is leaving users and developers solely in
> the hands of (very predatory) proprietary software companies. I believe
> that is wrong and we need, even if some find it distasteful, to make an
> effort to support those users needs within free software. That is why I
> and others have been working on this software, tuning and improving it,
> and now seeking distribution for it so that we can say "here is another
> important vertical market where free software has a viable alternative".
>
> Not only that, but I believe this package is good enough to be better
> than the commercial competition. With over 20 years experience as a
> Unix/Linux system programmer and Oracle DBA, I believe (and the others
> who have contributed) have given WACS has a good and solid design.
That's great :-)
Is it usable for other things as well? I mean I don't really have the
content to load up into my local porn installation, but if it works
better than (say) Gallery I might be tempted to use it to display my
personal (and decidedly non-racy) photographs to the world...
You're marketing it as a Web 'Adult' CMS, but what is it about the
content that makes it special-cased for that particular vertical?
I doubt if anyone has a problem with this appearing in the archive (no
discrimination against fields of endeavour, right?), but what you will
not be able to do, is to make us feel guilty about looking sideways at
this package. I'm sure we are all already doing plenty for free
software in the way that suits us best, and very likely we're all doing
it voluntarily and are taking on more than we really have time for.
Your best approach here will be to seek to resolve technical issues and
questions and to leave the rhetoric about why this is a wonderful
package and how it will change the world to languish in the description
field of the debian/control file.
Cheers,
Andrew.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com +64(272)DEBIAN
All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part