Dear all, I jump in the discussion to react to Zack's point of view about packaging:
> However, in many cases, free software developers tend to reinvent the > wheel quite often (so two apps can share the exact same goal and have > very similar designs, the only difference being that one is of less good > quality than the other). It's generally a bad idea to package both > apps in this case, because it increases the workload, reduces the > users-per-package ratio, etc. In the field I decided to cover, I took another approach: packaging A but not B biases the competition towards A, although I do not feel able to make a choice between A or B which would be logical and fair. Therefore, I try to cover the field as extensively as possible, packaging DFSG-free software by default and telling the users that non-free software will only packaged upon request. (http://wiki.debian.org/SequenceAlignment) With all packages performing the same task being equally available, I expect natural selection to happen based on other criteria: popularity, speed, accuracy, simplicity. With the expected increase of popcon after Etch release, I am eager to monitor the ecosysem and test in real wether my expectations were naive. Have a nice day, PS: Feel free to CC as I am not subscribed. PPS: The web archive provides the message-id, to set In-Reply-To correctly by hand. -- Charles Plessy Debian-Med packaging team http://charles.plessy.org Wako, Saitama, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]