On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 01:01:09PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > The intention, as I understand it, isn't to be a general-purpose package > repository (at least, last time I looked at it, no pre-built binary packages > were provided), but to be a "staging area" of sorts for packages which > people wanted sponsored into the archive.
That's correct. And we are trying to massively improve the user interface. Our goal is to provide a platform which allows better interaction between sponsors and sponsorees. As most people know it's hard to keep a package sponsored for a long time since many sponsors lose interest in sponsorship. So in the hopefully-not-so-far-future we will have a portal that shows which packages need sponsorship and also notice the current sponsors if the sponsorees have a new package ready. > The value of the packages therein is a subjective matter, and one which I, > for one, am not touching with my 10 foot pole (Barge, mk1, mod0). Many of the packages are definitely not advised to be used by end-users or even in production environments. Most packages that are displayed on http://mentors.debian.net are just needing a sponsor to take a look at. What is sometimes confused is that mentors.debian.net is not yet another inofficial binary package repository like Christian Marillat's server. In the past we even kept the binary packages (.deb). But since many people seemed to have put our server in the sources.list we not only had lots of traffic but also complaints that the packages were of bad quality. Since then we only provide source packages so that there is at least the dpkg-buildpackage barrier that keeps people from blindly using them. I guess I have to review the introductory texts on the main page soon. That will probably not stop the flaming though... Cheers Christoph -- ~ ~ ~ ".signature" [Modified] 3 lines --100%-- 3,41 All -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]