On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:13:38PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > I think the analogy holds, though. With a shared library, you don't > drop the old API until you have to do an ABI break for other reasons, > which means that old binaries won't work against the new library > anyway. At that point, you have a pretty clean break point where, > provided people have addressed deprecation warnings, you lose nothing > by dropping the old interface.
What I'm saying is that there is no need of dropping the old API in any foreseeable future. Just stop documenting it. Because as long as we document it, it's very hard to claim that "non-free" is not part of Debian, when you could just add it as a keyword side-by-side with "main" in your sources.list. The point is not dropping the current interface. The point is stop teaching new users, generation after generation, that "non-free" is just one word away from "main". At least make it one domain away! :-) And I understand that if we ever start documenting non-free.org (not that I think it'll ever happen, but just for the sake of discussion) there will be zealous sysadmins which will patch their sources.list because it's the right thing™ to do. I'll probably be in that set myself. But a) it will be their choice, and b) I personally think it would be an acceptable trade-off if in exchange we start putting some distance between ourselves and the current "non-free is not part of Debian" hypocrisy. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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