On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: >Some packages are "worth" more than others. Worth is often hard to define >but not impossible. Debian may not want to get into the definition >business but that doesn't mean it can't be done and circumstances may >force it too.
I can't help but infer from this statement that you feel the anarchism package is of low worth. If this was not your intent, please feel free to clarify. In any case, I would like to respond to your message. The concept of "worth" is by its nature a qualitative assesment, and therefore subjective. I would be inclined to say that it would be impossible to correctly judge the worth of a given package. Nevertheless, there are other properties we can consider: general "quality" and "fitness for a particular purpose". For instance, if a package is ridden with bugs (be they shortcomings in code, or grammatical errors in text), one could judge it to be of low quality, possibly low enough to warrant removing it from the distribution. Contextual fitness, on the other hand, rates a package as having "worth" in a particular situation. Sure, the anarchist FAQ may not be useful in learning to write applications in GTK+, but that doesn't mean it's not applicable to debian's userbase. Probably many users of debian will never find use for the anarchism package. So be it. The fact remains that there are quite a few debian users who do find it useful. [The number of emails i got when i was late packaging the most recent version of the FAQ is testament to that. <g>] >Yes but the maintainer should also ask > >- Does it enhance Debian? I agree with you completely. If you were referring to the anarchism package in this statement, I would like to mention that I asked myself that very question before i packaged anarchism. I thought it did -- and i still do -- and the last time the debate over this package emerged, the number of fellow debian maintainers who volunteered to take over the maintainership of the package should i bend to the wishes of those who wanted it removed greatly reinforced this judgment in my mind. >This has been a bit of a rant. Let me try and add something constructive. >It looks like we are going to 3 CDs. In the future we will only get >bigger. How do we manage that growth while not irritating users (swapping >CDs sucks) or censoring maintainers? > >One approach which has been suggested is to make extra cds by section. >So a data CD could include the bible, anarchy FAQ etc. Perhaps at some >point there will be a ham radio cd, electronics cd etc. This has the >advantage of being infinitely extensible but I worry that it narrows the >scope of Debian for the general user as most CD vendors especially the >cheap ones will probably not bother with the extra CDs. I've supported this direction in the past, and will continue to do so. Rather than narrow the scope of debian, however, I think it could actually serve to widen it -- imagine, in the case of textual works, a "debian bookshelf" CD of dfsg-free literary works, all ready to be integrated with the rest of the system with one simple call to apt-get. Similiarly, other special-interest collections could emerge: a CD for amateur radio enthusiasts, a CD for research scientists, etc. It's essentially just modularity at the distribution level -- and the freeness of debian allows even the most esoteric collections to be published in short runs and obtainable at a reasonable cost, even without access to a CD writer or an internet connectoin. >The big fly in the ointment is how to decide what gets into the core >because as you point out, it is very subjective. I think the >popularity-contest is a good way to help with this. I agree. I also believe that maintainers of the individual packages should be trusted to have enough common sense to place their package in the section in which it fits best. Even for those few hypothetical developers who may feel an ego boost by pumping limited-utility packages into the core distribution, the BTS can serve as a means to encourage them to rectify their position. In any case, I appreciate your comments. For free software, Ed.
