Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 02:23:03PM +0200, Federico Di Gregorio wrote:
Scavenging the mail folder uncovered Siggy Brentrup's letter:
There should be one for the main distribution. Assume I want to go
into the CD business providing support for packages in the main
dist. No major problem with most of the packages, but I am not willing
to support packages with philosophical, political or religious
contents.
The way it is, I can't say Support for all of Debian's main dist.
My point is, should there be subjective stuff in the main dist?
I don't know the answer but having non-doc (in the sense of
non-application-that-is-in-main-doc) stuff is bad. What if I package
the 3 CD set of US maps that is publicy available? That is about 1.8Gb
of sources plus 1.8Gb of .debs for about 3.6Gb of ftp space... and
nobody can tell me don't do that!
OTH, everybody can say you to not do that. The only point where policy
say you not to do something, is about dfsg-freeness. Even there, they
just say you to put them in non-free. What protect Debian from abuse
is the eye-balls of everyone. The same ones who say: He! new-maintainer
take too much time! or What all those packages waiting so long in
Incoming? or even: Should we consider a free client of a non-free
server to be non-free?. I have a great confidence about hearing the
herd of kitten if you really upload the US maps, I'm just not sure
if they'll just say you to remove it or ask you to upload the more
recent version ;)
What about having Debian be an OS+apps and have SPI found a *new*
association for the distribution of free *data*? The data can even use
.deb format, but Debian/doc is definitely the wrong place for
religious/political/etc stuff. IMHO!
Why can't Debian just can't be this association? That's right that
main/doc is missed named and that we need a better sectionning
(main/graphics is even worst and what about x11). When I submit
data, I knew that it was just a patch, an incomplete solution to
the problem. It has to be easily realisable, implementable and not
too much contrainst so that it will add to Debian without removing
anything. IMHO, that's why it was accepted with so few discussions.
It was just a first step but now it's done. Debian will continue
to grow and we will handle it better then some company that forget
their starter consumers to go for the mass market. It's simply not
the way we work.
Debian is one of the most interesting example of distributed development
I can see. A very flat organization, based on volunteers, distributed
around the world and with a organizational system to make it shame most
of the RD directors of TOP500 companies. Sure, Debian don't follow
the same model but, that's ok: we don't even share the same goals; they
want to make money, we want to make the best distribution and have some
fun by doing so.
We have some fantastic tools: the build system, dpkg/apt, debconf/menu
consors, the cd-scripts, dinstall, the BTS, the vote system, the build
queue, the policy modifications process, etc. All this tools manage the
growth of Debian fantastically. There still some bugs to work around
(growing numbers of critical bugs, lag in the new maintainer process...)
but new initiatives (qa.debian.org and the sponsorship page) proves that
we aware about them and that we are in the process of correcting them.
Maybe should we make more publicity about this aspect of Debian. I'll
just give a conference next month about the organization of Debian,
what we are, how we work and how can they work *with* us. A quick
poll of people around me, all implicated in Linux just show me a big
point: most (something like half the people) think that Debian is a
startup company like RH was a time ago. They can't believe that Debian
work the same way as Linux, even a more open one should I say. Maybe
ESR should brainwash them a little more about the OpenSource model ;)
To everyone, keep working on this, I'm pretty sure we can get out
of it *without* removing anything to Debian. Just make it even
better!
Ciao,
Fabien
{ who finally remove his Debian patriotic hat ;) }
BTW, why couldn't we make a Cecilia/RoseGarden/abc contest for a
Debian Hymn? The FSF has one, why not us ;)
Ciao,
Federico
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Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
[about a flat-file installation tool]. On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 07:58:02PM +0200, Remco Blaakmeer wrote: If you make such a tool and people start to use it on a large scale, you'd better be sure you get the package dependencies right. The context was data files which have no particular administrative requirements. Consider a tool which would install into a safe part of the namespace, and do something reasonable for a package-name [perhaps using some convention which is illegal for a debian package, to avoid any potential name conflicts.] There are complications -- for example, it's probably reasonable for a person to add documents to an existing collection (pseudo-package). It's also probably reasonable to define a mapping between some url and the local documents (allowing semi-automated or automated updating for frequently changing documents). [[I guess I'm currently describing something like a a cut down version of mirror, or maybe wget, with uninstall.]] But this idea probably needs to be fleshed out more (or shot full of holes) before it gets implemented. -- Raul
Re: Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 11:43:50AM +0100, Matthew Vernon wrote: David Starner writes: Instead of each developer chose what packages are and aren't useful to them, why don't we look at the popularity contest? A simple, bias-free way of seperating programs on to the CD's, by actual use. That is what it was made for. And how difficult would it be to fiddle the results of this??? Not very. So? It shouldn't be hard to detect, and it's not a big deal for the most part. As for the other guy, talking about world domination - that's what you have to do to get world domination. If it ever gets near that point, then Debian will have to consider whether that's what the developers want to be working on. As for a realistic, near term (next 3 years) event it's rather implausable. David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] if it's free and it's packaged then we accept it into the dist in the location defined by policy - at the moment, that's debian main. we probably should, as has been discussed before, have an etexts and a data section for this kind of stuff. That's what I am asking for. if something is free and someone does the work to package it then we accept it in the distribution. There should be one for the main distribution. Assume I want to go into the CD business providing support for packages in the main dist. No major problem with most of the packages, but I am not willing to support packages with philosophical, political or religious contents. that's ludicrous. what support is needed for texts? customer: i can't read foo-text. tech support: have you tried opening your eyes sir? customer: I don't get verse to show me my daily devotional support: Use your brain. More serious: customer: I found a typo ... |I don't understand that ancient word (very likely in over here) |Luther's bible says ... but what you sold me is completely different. |Why do you include philosophical texts support: Sorry, if you buy Debian, you always get it. The opinions expressed in Debian packages are not necessarily ours. At present it's a bit biased since no one volunteered to package opposite views. -- noch nichts Aufregendes: Siggy Brentrup - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - voice: +49-441-6990134
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Sun, 26 Sep 1999, Ed Boraas wrote: 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. For myself, no I don't. But it is only a concern of Debian if for instance there was a real space crunch or something. Mainly I was trying to address the notion that such choices couldn't be made or Debian would lose it's soul (if some people will pardon the expression :-) if it did. or if you remove one you have to remove them all etc. I don't believe those are good arguments. 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] Well I have no problems whatsoever with that. In fact the more we know about what our users like the better we can make Debian. We should ask. Maybe it's time we had some market research. Not the we can increase sales 18% if we put a pink stripe on the box kind but some kind of survey of who exactly our users our and what they like and dislike. There are some logistical problems in doing this right so i'm going to think about this a bit and comeback with a proposal before saying anymore. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On 28 Sep 1999, Siggy Brentrup wrote: More serious: Hahaha. customer: I found a typo ... |I don't understand that ancient word (very likely in over here) | Luther's bible says ... but what you sold me is completely different. |Why do you include philosophical texts support: Sorry, if you buy Debian, you always get it. The opinions expressed in Debian packages are not necessarily ours. At present it's a bit biased since no one volunteered to package opposite views. Oh for crying out loud. I apologize to the entire list for my part in bringing about this silliness. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 12:05:37AM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: Why even involve debhelper? At least in the case of the Project Gutenberg files some of which I have, they are just long ascii files so the rules file could just stick them into (for example) /usr/share/doc/etexts call doc-base and be done with it. AFAIK all the project Gutenberg files are public domain so one generic fill in the blanks copyright file would suffice. Voila you almost instantly have 2000 works containing more than a gig of text. I'd buy such a CD if it were offered. And I know plenty of people who would too. Works for me. Real question is: does anyone care enough to bother? Alternate question: why do we even have to package up flat text files? Why can't we just import them into debian in some regular manner? [I can see that naming convention is important, but are there any other issues beyond that? -- I mean, besides the issue of the current implementation of dpkg.] -- Raul
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: Why even involve debhelper? At least in the case of the Project Gutenberg files some of which I have, they are just long ascii files so the rules file could just stick them into (for example) /usr/share/doc/etexts call doc-base and be done with it. AFAIK all the project Gutenberg files are public domain so one generic fill in the blanks copyright file would suffice. Voila you almost instantly have 2000 works containing more than a gig of text. I'd buy such a CD if it were offered. And I know plenty of people who would too. I would, too. But I don't see the need to *package* large ascii files. What would be the difference between Gutenberg Debian-packaged and Gutenberg gzipped on CD or ftp? There *is* a difference for documents that require some technical setup to work (like the kjv-bible that needs a special viewer program) or are processed by other programs (like verse). Bjorn Brill [EMAIL PROTECTED] Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 01:12:06AM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: Alternate question: why do we even have to package up flat text files? Why can't we just import them into debian in some regular manner? [I can see that naming convention is important, but are there any other issues beyond that? -- I mean, besides the issue of the current implementation of dpkg.] Exactly. A better designed package manager would support modular package format handling. then we could simply do (let's call the package manager hpm for now): hpm -i blacksteel.etheme instead dpkg -i etheme-blacksteel.deb hpm -i realvideo.tar.gz instead alien; dpkg hpm -i somestuff.rpm instead alien; dpkg hpm -i CPAN:mymodule hpm -i CTAN:mytexstyle hpm -i gutenberg:faust and so on. I think we will be able to do this in a few years, because we have to to cope with the grow of free information and data available. Thanks, Marcus -- `Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org Check Key server Marcus Brinkmann GNUhttp://www.gnu.orgfor public PGP Key [EMAIL PROTECTED]PGP Key ID 36E7CD09 http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: Exactly. A better designed package manager would support modular package format handling. then we could simply do (let's call the package manager hpm for now): hpm -i blacksteel.etheme instead dpkg -i etheme-blacksteel.deb hpm -i realvideo.tar.gz instead alien; dpkg hpm -i somestuff.rpm instead alien; dpkg hpm -i CPAN:mymodule hpm -i CTAN:mytexstyle hpm -i gutenberg:faust and so on. If you make such a tool and people start to use it on a large scale, you'd better be sure you get the package dependencies right. RPM files have file dependencies, not package dependencies like DEB files have. TAR files have no dependencies at all. How are you going to find out which packages a TAR file depends on (and which versions of those packages)? And how would you handle conflicts between packages that should be there but aren't? It is already a problem to install RedHat RPMs on a SuSE system and vice versa. Please don't encourage people to install RPMs on a Debian system if they don't know exactly what they are doing. Their systems *will* break. And they will blame Debian for it. The idea to install E themes, CPAN modules, CTAN modules etc. this way seems nice to me, though. Just make sure all files within the themes / modules are in the right place. And add the right dependencies. For example, E14 themes should have something like Depends: enlightenment (= 0.14), enlightenment ( 0.15). Of course, you'd have to detect the version automatically. Not to say it's a bad idea, just that it will be a helluva lot of work to make it work the right way. Remco -- rd1936: 7:35pm up 6 days, 23:24, 6 users, load average: 1.26, 1.44, 1.77
Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
*** Please _don't_Cc:_ me when following up to the list *** Sorry for responding late, had a mail hickup on sunday :( Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] it's irrelevant whether other debian developers or users agree with me or disagree with me about the relative utility of these two packages. by not censoring packages, by refusing to censor packages, we create a distribution which is good and useful for everyone - not just those whose needs are the same as the censors. some find the bible package useful and i don't begrudge them that - if it makes debian more useful to them then it is a good thing that it is included. we should not be censoring, we should not be saying the bible is good but the koran or bhagavid gita or even the anarchist faq is worthless. or vice-versa. Is it really censoring to keep all non-technical packages out of main? I don't say don't package it nor don't make it available. if something is free and someone does the work to package it then we accept it in the distribution. There should be one for the main distribution. Assume I want to go into the CD business providing support for packages in the main dist. No major problem with most of the packages, but I am not willing to support packages with philosophical, political or religious contents. The way it is, I can't say Support for all of Debian's main dist. My point is, should there be subjective stuff in the main dist? CU Siggy
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
Scavenging the mail folder uncovered Siggy Brentrup's letter:
There should be one for the main distribution. Assume I want to go
into the CD business providing support for packages in the main
dist. No major problem with most of the packages, but I am not willing
to support packages with philosophical, political or religious
contents.
The way it is, I can't say Support for all of Debian's main dist.
My point is, should there be subjective stuff in the main dist?
I don't know the answer but having non-doc (in the sense of
non-application-that-is-in-main-doc) stuff is bad. What if I package
the 3 CD set of US maps that is publicy available? That is about 1.8Gb
of sources plus 1.8Gb of .debs for about 3.6Gb of ftp space... and
nobody can tell me don't do that!
What about having Debian be an OS+apps and have SPI found a *new*
association for the distribution of free *data*? The data can even use
.deb format, but Debian/doc is definitely the wrong place for
religious/political/etc stuff. IMHO!
Ciao,
Federico
--
Federico Di Gregorio [http://www.bolinando.com/fog] {Friend of Penguins}
Debian GNU/Linux Developer Italian Press Contact[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Try the Joy of TeX [http://www.tug.org]
-- brought to you by One Line Spam
data section! [was: Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)]
On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 02:23:03PM +0200, Federico Di Gregorio wrote: Scavenging the mail folder uncovered Siggy Brentrup's letter: There should be one for the main distribution. Assume I want to go into the CD business providing support for packages in the main dist. The way it is, I can't say Support for all of Debian's main dist. I don't know the answer but having non-doc (in the sense of non-application-that-is-in-main-doc) stuff is bad. What if I package the 3 CD set of US maps that is publicy available? That is about 1.8Gb of sources plus 1.8Gb of .debs for about 3.6Gb of ftp space... and nobody can tell me don't do that! What about having Debian be an OS+apps and have SPI found a *new* association for the distribution of free *data*? We are already doing that - the proposal on the policy list regarding a new, data section of the FTP server has passed. Hopefully, it will be implemented in practice soon. -- enJoy -*/\*- don't even try to pronounce my first name
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 11:46:39AM +0200, Siggy Brentrup wrote: Is it really censoring to keep all non-technical packages out of main? I don't say don't package it nor don't make it available. Maybe it's time to fork off an independent documentation project? We'd need to provide them a stable interface (probably just debhelper and a basic template) for package construction. -- Raul
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Raul Miller wrote:
On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 11:46:39AM +0200, Siggy Brentrup wrote:
Is it really censoring to keep all non-technical packages out of main?
I don't say don't package it nor don't make it available.
Maybe it's time to fork off an independent documentation project?
This has been proposed several times, but actually never been implemented.
At least 2 categories have been identified:
etext: Packaged texts/books that are not directly related to Debian or
computer documentation (bible-kjv, anarchism-faq, etc...).
data: Data packaged for use by some Debian programs (astronomical data,
etc...)
We'd need to provide them a stable interface (probably just debhelper
and a basic template) for package construction.
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Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
I agree with you on this one, we do NOT need html, or text versions of the Bible, or other non-technical or computer related documents in main. As it is, potato is HUGE, larger than ANY other distribution. My thought is that if it is not a program, or does not enhance or assist in the use of a program, then it should probably not go into main. Note that documentation on Linux and Debian assist in the use of these programs. On the same note, debates about Linux vs. other operating systems and environments, these also fall under the, Leave it out since it won't help with the use of what we provide. That is to be fair. Many people already put contrib and non-free into their sources.list, so it won't hurt anyone by putting these sort of things in contrib. Dave Bristel On 27 Sep 1999, Siggy Brentrup wrote: Date: 27 Sep 1999 11:46:39 +0200 From: Siggy Brentrup [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb) Resent-Date: 27 Sep 1999 11:11:42 - Resent-From: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Resent-cc: recipient list not shown: ; *** Please _don't_Cc:_ me when following up to the list *** Sorry for responding late, had a mail hickup on sunday :( Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] it's irrelevant whether other debian developers or users agree with me or disagree with me about the relative utility of these two packages. by not censoring packages, by refusing to censor packages, we create a distribution which is good and useful for everyone - not just those whose needs are the same as the censors. some find the bible package useful and i don't begrudge them that - if it makes debian more useful to them then it is a good thing that it is included. we should not be censoring, we should not be saying the bible is good but the koran or bhagavid gita or even the anarchist faq is worthless. or vice-versa. Is it really censoring to keep all non-technical packages out of main? I don't say don't package it nor don't make it available. if something is free and someone does the work to package it then we accept it in the distribution. There should be one for the main distribution. Assume I want to go into the CD business providing support for packages in the main dist. No major problem with most of the packages, but I am not willing to support packages with philosophical, political or religious contents. The way it is, I can't say Support for all of Debian's main dist. My point is, should there be subjective stuff in the main dist? CU Siggy -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
David Starner writes: On Fri, Sep 24, 1999 at 05:59:27PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: Nevertheless it is moot point because we are running out of room and there has to be a third CD. It might as well contain all the documents and other packages non-essential to using an OS. Here's another idea. What about putting all the non-essential compilers, includes and other development tools on the extra CD too. They take up a lot of room and does the average Debian user really need an eiffel compiler or the IMAP development kit? Instead of each developer chose what packages are and aren't useful to them, why don't we look at the popularity contest? A simple, bias-free way of seperating programs on to the CD's, by actual use. That is what it was made for. And how difficult would it be to fiddle the results of this??? Matthew -- At least you know where you are with Microsoft. True. I just wish I'd brought a paddle. http://www.debian.org/
Re: Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Matthew Vernon wrote: David Starner writes: On Fri, Sep 24, 1999 at 05:59:27PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: Nevertheless it is moot point because we are running out of room and there has to be a third CD. It might as well contain all the documents and other packages non-essential to using an OS. Here's another idea. What about putting all the non-essential compilers, includes and other development tools on the extra CD too. They take up a lot of room and does the average Debian user really need an eiffel compiler or the IMAP development kit? Instead of each developer chose what packages are and aren't useful to them, why don't we look at the popularity contest? A simple, bias-free way of seperating programs on to the CD's, by actual use. That is what it was made for. And how difficult would it be to fiddle the results of this??? Oh, and of course, when the ratio developers/programmers vs non-programmers turns into what it is for other OS's (that is, when Debian reaches world-domination), the main-CD would only contain X-related stuff + games... Non really the ideal distribution, eh?! /David Weinehall _ _ // David Weinehall [EMAIL PROTECTED] / Northern lights wander \\ // Project MCA Linux hacker// Dance across the winter sky // \ http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao// Full colour fire /
Re: Censoring :) (was: Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 11:46:19AM +0200, Siggy Brentrup wrote: Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: it's irrelevant whether other debian developers or users agree with me or disagree with me about the relative utility of these two packages. by not censoring packages, by refusing to censor packages, we create a distribution which is good and useful for everyone - not just those whose needs are the same as the censors. some find the bible package useful and i don't begrudge them that - if it makes debian more useful to them then it is a good thing that it is included. we should not be censoring, we should not be saying the bible is good but the koran or bhagavid gita or even the anarchist faq is worthless. or vice-versa. Is it really censoring to keep all non-technical packages out of main? I don't say don't package it nor don't make it available. that's a different question entirely, and not one that i'm addressing. my point is that if we accept one into main then we have no justification for not accepting all. if we decide that non-technical documents (i.e. anything which is not documentation or tutorial material for a program - literature, mythology, philosophy, etc) do not belong in main then that applies to all such packages. if it's free and it's packaged then we accept it into the dist in the location defined by policy - at the moment, that's debian main. we probably should, as has been discussed before, have an etexts and a data section for this kind of stuff. if something is free and someone does the work to package it then we accept it in the distribution. There should be one for the main distribution. Assume I want to go into the CD business providing support for packages in the main dist. No major problem with most of the packages, but I am not willing to support packages with philosophical, political or religious contents. that's ludicrous. what support is needed for texts? customer: i can't read foo-text. tech support: have you tried opening your eyes sir? craig -- craig sanders
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Craig Sanders wrote: On Fri, Sep 24, 1999 at 05:59:07PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: The criterion should be utility. wrong. we've had this censorship discussion many times before. the only criteria for inclusion in debian is: Yes I know. I remember it happening at least twice in relation to this package and I remember the purity package debate too. What I was trying to address was this notion that keeps coming up that if you disallow one of this type of package you must disallow them all. It doesn't follow. 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. - is it free? - could someone be bothered doing the work of packaging it? if the answer to both questions is yes, then there is no justification for refusing the package. Yes but the maintainer should also ask - Does it enhance Debian? Not because he has to but because he should want to. And other developers and users should feel free to comment. The reason is that we are not just shoveling packages on a CD but at least trying to put together a finished product. Sure we decide to make the packages we are interested in but we also enjoy making a thing that other people enjoy and use. That's why we are making a public distribution rather than just working alone in our basements. I could GPL the contents of my /tmp directory and debianize and upload it right now. But I won't. Not because someone is forcing me not to but because it's no good for Debian to have such a pointless package clogging up it's diskspace and bandwidth. I'm also looking at the packages I already maintain and I'm going to orphan or maintain privately the ones which I don't think add anything to the dist. Even if it isn't official Debian policy, IMO (and I stress this is my opinion) more people should think this way. The Bible as a literary and cultural foundation of Western civilization will be useful to a lot more people than the Anarchism package. 'utility' is a subjective thing. i personally would find the anarchist faq far more useful and interesting than (a bad translation of) religious texts. I understand. But would the entire Debian constituency? (Which is what? Just the developers? Developers + users? All Linux users...) If we are interested we could find out. 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 would rather see the core Debian containing a sampling of all the various types of free software available and the far-out esoteric stuff would be addons. That way people would at least be exposed to different things even if they weren't able to get really in-depth with just the basic Debian CDs. 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. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On 25 Sep 1999, Rainer Weikusat wrote: You might equally well consider this for yourself. Other people (including other people belonging to your particular religion) might regard different things as offensive than you do. If one is worried about how something is going to be viewed by Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists isn't it a good idea to ASK THEM before assuming you know what they are going to say? This is condescending at best and racist at worst. I don't know about Muslims or Buddhists but I can speak authoritatively on Hinduism. There is no basis for considering the Bible offensive. Irrelevant maybe not offensive. Individual Hindus may disagree but that is their personal opinion and has nothing to do with our religion. Just compare the two statements: 'People of religion X might find religion Y's documents offensive.' 'This is what Christians always do.' Given that I didn't say that (This is what Christians are often accused of has a totally different meaning.), I fail to see your point. And then, please, try to figure out, who should be told to stick to his own prejudices and stop trying to speak for other people. The person who was trying to speak for others. (Hint: Not me.) The criterion should be utility. The Bible as a literary and cultural foundation of Western civilization will be useful to a lot more people than the Anarchism package. You don't try to speak for me again, do you? Nope. I'm expressing the opinion that more people will use the Bible than an Anarchy faq. Granted I don't have scientific proof of that (except that I've noticed millions of people interested in Christianity and only a handful of graduate student types interested in Anarchy.) but that doesn't mean we can't do some kind of test to see if I'm right or wrong. How is that speaking for you? There's a nice (though somewhat rude) proverb in Germany about the validity of arguments by greater numbers like this: Shit must be something great to eat. Millions of flies just can't be wrong. This is based on a logical fallacy. (I don't know what the Western term is but it is hetvabhasa in Sanskrit I believe.) The problem domain is insufficiently defined. Are we talking what's great to eat for people or for all living thing? If just people what flies eat is irrelevant. If all living things, than yes, shit is relatively great to eat. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 09:10:19PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: - is it free? - could someone be bothered doing the work of packaging it? if the answer to both questions is yes, then there is no justification for refusing the package. Yes but the maintainer should also ask - Does it enhance Debian? if it is useful or interesting to even one person then it enhances debian. in other words, this is not a useful question to ask - if it wasn't of value to at least one person then they would not have bothered to package it. many of the packages in debian are in debian because the maintainer felt that they were useful to them personallyif others benefit from it too, that is good but it is sufficient that the maintainer has, by their work, made debian that much more useful to themself. i, and i guess many other developers, originally joined debian so that some useful tool or program would become part of debian. this is one of the strengths of debian...all of us are here because we want to make debian better or more useful, and one of the prime motivators is to make it more useful to ourselves. our policy and technical standards are a framework which allows us all to do that without conflicting too much with each other. Not because he has to but because he should want to. And other developers and users should feel free to comment. yes, others are free to comment but there is no justification other than non-freeness for excluding a package from debian. The reason is that we are not just shoveling packages on a CD but at least trying to put together a finished product. and it is the maintainers job to create their package according to policy so that it becomes a smoothly integrated part of the whole that is debian. 'utility' is a subjective thing. i personally would find the anarchist faq far more useful and interesting than (a bad translation of) religious texts. I understand. But would the entire Debian constituency? (Which is what? Just the developers? Developers + users? All Linux users...) If we are interested we could find out. it's irrelevant whether other debian developers or users agree with me or disagree with me about the relative utility of these two packages. by not censoring packages, by refusing to censor packages, we create a distribution which is good and useful for everyone - not just those whose needs are the same as the censors. some find the bible package useful and i don't begrudge them that - if it makes debian more useful to them then it is a good thing that it is included. we should not be censoring, we should not be saying the bible is good but the koran or bhagavid gita or even the anarchist faq is worthless. or vice-versa. if something is free and someone does the work to package it then we accept it in the distribution. 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? most suggestions have been variations of the following idea: to put all doc and data packages (especially those not directly associated with a program) on a CD by themselves. that seems like a good idea to me. 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. actually, it would increase the scope of debian as a general purpose distribution - there would be something in it for everyone. if we get to the point of having specialty CDs then those who want them will be able to purchase them from specialty vendors or download the packages for free from the net. craig -- craig sanders
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
Sorry to sort of butt in here again, but maybe a committed Debian user's perspective would be helpful... On 09/26/99 at 11:55:09, Craig Sanders wrote concerning Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb: 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. actually, it would increase the scope of debian as a general purpose distribution - there would be something in it for everyone. if we get to the point of having specialty CDs then those who want them will be able to purchase them from specialty vendors or download the packages for free from the net. Exactly. In fact, with apt maturing the way it is, Debian has discrete advantages in this area over other distributions. We don't *need* all those document packages to make Debian work, so having them on CD is unnecessary for anyone on the internet. Also, most folks will not install the whole collection of document packages. Frankly, I'd be surprised if any non-developer installed over half of them. So why force them all onto an additional CD that will probably just collect dust? As long as the archive is apt-able over the internet, the few documents the average user needs will be within easy reach. For the rest, there are specialty CDs. Of course, I'm guessing about users' needs and internet access here. Feel free to prove me wrong. Jesse
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Sun, Sep 26, 1999 at 11:55:09AM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote: On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 09:10:19PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: - is it free? - could someone be bothered doing the work of packaging it? if the answer to both questions is yes, then there is no justification for refusing the package. Yes but the maintainer should also ask - Does it enhance Debian? if it is useful or interesting to even one person then it enhances debian. in other words, this is not a useful question to ask - if it wasn't of value to at least one person then they would not have bothered to package it. many of the packages in debian are in debian because the maintainer felt that they were useful to them personallyif others benefit from it too, that is good but it is sufficient that the maintainer has, by their work, made debian that much more useful to themself. I'm afraid I don't quite agree with you about this : I have the feeling that sometimes the only interest found in the package is not the package by itself, but the fact that it has been packaged : I mean, the only interest is for the guy who wanted to become a maintainer, and just looked for a stuff to put in main... Best regs. -- Thierry LARONDE [EMAIL PROTECTED] website : http://www.polynum.com unctuous : used about somebody who pretends to put balm on your wounds, when, at the very time, by way of preliminaries, he's just oiling your arse. Adrien Herryolt, Le glossaire des Précieuses
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
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.
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Fri, Sep 24, 1999 at 05:59:07PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: The criterion should be utility. wrong. we've had this censorship discussion many times before. the only criteria for inclusion in debian is: - is it free? - could someone be bothered doing the work of packaging it? if the answer to both questions is yes, then there is no justification for refusing the package. The Bible as a literary and cultural foundation of Western civilization will be useful to a lot more people than the Anarchism package. 'utility' is a subjective thing. i personally would find the anarchist faq far more useful and interesting than (a bad translation of) religious texts. craig -- craig sanders
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
In my understanding the bible packages belong into contrib *at best*, since it's value to the public is at least questionable if not offensive to muslims, buddhists(no not to them), hindus ... youre trying to be politically correct yuck ! i hoped for higher level of discusion than in equal-rights-for-black-jewish-not-so-proficient-women comittee of parliament As an alternative I might decide to get at a digital version of Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book and package it for debian just for fun. Either have to go into non-us I presume :) bible is needed as sometimes usuful example of utility of browser browser is Good and shouldnt be thrown away from debian because of someone's ideology 'LIttle Red Book' is good idea I suggest also 'Mein Kampf' both books are under censure in many countries and we should give world some freedom more btw : im atheist Please define in private mail, dunno wether I'm atheist, antitheist, agnostic or simply a pagean. In our culture definitions of these terms mostly come from the other side. This means I think there is NO god at all nor anything similar
Re: Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 07:28:57AM +, Lars Wirzenius wrote: David Starner [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Instead of each developer chose what packages are and aren't useful to them, why don't we look at the popularity contest? A simple, bias-free way of seperating programs on to the CD's, by actual use. That is what it was made for. http://www.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/ says *** THIS IS EXPERIMENTAL!! *** Try not to get upset if the results are incorrect, but be sure to e-mail me if you think there's something funny going on. I wouldn't base decisions on it yet. Is there any reason to think it's not correct? More importantly, even if it is somewhat wrong, is there any reason to think it's not better than what we have? Assuming it works, popcon takes into account dependencies (because if a depends on b, then at least as many people have b installed as have a installed.) If there are any standard packages that popcon wouldn't put on the first CD, I would question whether they really should be standard. The biggest problem with popcon is that it gives more weight to a program in Slink than to a program new with Potato (assuming there are a significant amount of people running popcon on straight Slink systems.) David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
Excerpts from debian: 25-Sep-99 Re: Useless packages (was R.. by David [EMAIL PROTECTED] Is there any reason to think it's not correct? More importantly, even if it is somewhat wrong, is there any reason to think it's not better than what we have? Well, accurate for the data it gets doesn't neccessarily mean accurate for all debian users, and there's probably reason to believe that systems that installed popularity-contest or send out the emails would differ systematically in some ways from systems that didn't (For one, the computer would have to be on and on a network when the emails are sent, so most respondants are probably on and on a network continuosly..) In any case, it's probably a good thing to use, as long as its not taken too seriously..
Re: Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 02:51:36AM -0500, David Starner wrote: On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 07:28:57AM +, Lars Wirzenius wrote: David Starner [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Instead of each developer chose what packages are and aren't useful to them, why don't we look at the popularity contest? A simple, bias-free way of seperating programs on to the CD's, by actual use. That is what it was made for. http://www.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/ says *** THIS IS EXPERIMENTAL!! *** Try not to get upset if the results are incorrect, but be sure to e-mail me if you think there's something funny going on. I wouldn't base decisions on it yet. i wouldn't base any decisions on it ever. that's not it's purpose. Is there any reason to think it's not correct? more to the point, is there any reason to think that it matters whether it is correct or not? the popularity contest is for informational (entertainment) purposes only, not for decision making. the usefulness of a package has nothing at all to do with it's popularity - it may be unpopular because it is an obscure and specialised tool but to those who know and need it, it is essential. the survey was never intended to be a means of deciding whether packages are useful or not. nor was it intended for deciding whether to include a package in debian or not. at most, it is a tool for *helping* to order packages on a CD (and even that is of limited use because it mostly shows the popularity of old packages in the last release but not new ones in the current unstable). craig -- craig sanders
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 24 Sep 1999, Siggy Brentrup wrote: In my understanding the bible packages belong into contrib *at best*, since it's value to the public is at least questionable if not offensive to muslims, buddhists(no not to them), hindus ... Um, I'm a Hindu, a Shastri (Hindu priest) actually. And I find nothing offensive or questionable about the Bible. If this debate is going to degenerate into prejudice (and history shows it will) kindly stick to your own prejudices and don't try and speak for others. That's what Christians are often accused of! :-) You might equally well consider this for yourself. Other people (including other people belonging to your particular religion) might regard different things as offensive than you do. Just compare the two statements: 'People of religion X might find religion Y's documents offensive.' 'This is what Christians always do.' And then, please, try to figure out, who should be told to stick to his own prejudices and stop trying to speak for other people. The criterion should be utility. The Bible as a literary and cultural foundation of Western civilization will be useful to a lot more people than the Anarchism package. You don't try to speak for me again, do you? There's a nice (though somewhat rude) proverb in Germany about the validity of arguments by greater numbers like this: Shit must be something great to eat. Millions of flies just can't be wrong. Rainer -- - sig lost -
Re: Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 08:18:04PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote: On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 02:51:36AM -0500, David Starner wrote: On Sat, Sep 25, 1999 at 07:28:57AM +, Lars Wirzenius wrote: David Starner [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Instead of each developer chose what packages are and aren't useful to them, why don't we look at the popularity contest? A simple, bias-free way of seperating programs on to the CD's, by actual use. That is what it was made for. http://www.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/ says *** THIS IS EXPERIMENTAL!! *** Try not to get upset if the results are incorrect, but be sure to e-mail me if you think there's something funny going on. I wouldn't base decisions on it yet. i wouldn't base any decisions on it ever. that's not it's purpose. IIRC, it was designed in part to simplify the decision of what packages to put on which CD. Is there any reason to think it's not correct? more to the point, is there any reason to think that it matters whether it is correct or not? the popularity contest is for informational (entertainment) purposes only, not for decision making. the usefulness of a package has nothing at all to do with it's popularity - it may be unpopular because it is an obscure and specialised tool but to those who know and need it, it is essential. Okay, if you need the complete suite of geda tools, you're probably going to need the full set of Debian CD's. That's life. Almost every program is going to be essential to someone, and putting all the games on the last CD is not going to go over well. the survey was never intended to be a means of deciding whether packages are useful or not. nor was it intended for deciding whether to include a package in debian or not. I wasn't claiming anything of the sort. at most, it is a tool for *helping* to order packages on a CD It's a nice way to order the packages with little to no arbitary decisions, and it's much harder to argue your favorite program was left off arbitrarily. You could set up goals for the CD instead (all Emacsen and a complete Gnome setup on the first CD, for instance), but think about the amount of arguing _those_ goals could cause. (and even that is of limited use because it mostly shows the popularity of old packages in the last release but not new ones in the current unstable). Over half the people who report are running Potato (libstdc++2.9-glibc2.1 is installed by 355 people, while textutils (the top of base) is installed by 612). Still, many of the people who install by CD are running Slink, and would appreciate having the upgraded versions of their current programs on the CD. Does any one have a script to produce a CD listing from the popularity contest? That might produce interesting fuel for the discussion. David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
Bjoern Brill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Taking the risk to burn like hell: I think the exhaustive exploration
of ANY political theory and practice is VERY misplaced in ANY Linux
distribution. I would say the same thing about The top 1000 FAQ on
home-made apple pie, but nobody has packaged that (yet).
Just make sure that when you do throw it out, you take the bible with it :)
--
Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 is out! ( http://www.debian.org/ )
Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmVHI~} [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
Just make sure that when you do throw it out, you take the bible with it :) I dont think throwing out bible(1) is a good idea It is exactly, letter-after-letter what it claim to be, it is on 2nd CD, well-compressed (anarchism was in both text and html unpacked versions) and is wide-used doc, althru not computing-related And this is the only place where someone can get english electronical version of bible. It also have interesting browser which can be used for many other docs of such structure(book/chapter/verse) (There is sometimes a need for it) and interesting compresion-method As long as there is some place on 2nd CD i dont see any big reason to throw it out. btw : im atheist
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
Tomasz Wegrzanowski [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just make sure that when you do throw it out, you take the bible with it :) *SECONDED* I dont think throwing out bible(1) is a good idea It is exactly, letter-after-letter what it claim to be, it is on 2nd CD, well-compressed (anarchism was in both text and html unpacked versions) and is wide-used doc, althru not computing-related And this is the only place where someone can get english electronical version of bible. It also have interesting browser which can be used for many other docs of such structure(book/chapter/verse) (There is sometimes a need for it) and interesting compresion-method As long as there is some place on 2nd CD i dont see any big reason to throw it out. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I have been away from the list for some time. In my understanding the bible packages belong into contrib *at best*, since it's value to the public is at least questionable if not offensive to muslims, buddhists(no not to them), hindus ... As an alternative I might decide to get at a digital version of Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book and package it for debian just for fun. Either have to go into non-us I presume :) btw : im atheist Please define in private mail, dunno wether I'm atheist, antitheist, agnostic or simply a pagean. In our culture definitions of these terms mostly come from the other side. CU Siggy -- noch nichts Aufregendes: Siggy Brentrup - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - voice: +49-441-6990134
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On 09/24/99 at 21:29:04, Siggy Brentrup wrote concerning Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb: Tomasz Wegrzanowski [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In my understanding the bible packages belong into contrib *at best*, since it's value to the public is at least questionable if not offensive to muslims, buddhists(no not to them), hindus ... As an alternative I might decide to get at a digital version of Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book and package it for debian just for fun. Either have to go into non-us I presume :) FWIW, from a theological/philosophical/ethical perspective, I'd just as soon have anything in the distribution that a developer wants to package. Assuming there's room for it, of course. Just because a package exists doesn't mean I must install it. And if I wanted to read Marx, Mau, the Vedas, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and the Bible, each would speak for itself as to its own intrinsic value and message; after all, that's why they exist in the first place. BTW, it's unfortunate that so many such electronic texts, alternate Bible versions in particular (IMO), are non-free. I've written a set of Perl scripts/databases for the use of several more modern Bible translations, but the copyrights on the Bible versions they use would make them non-free or contrib at best. :-( However, I'd support an effort to collect a distinct set of dfsg-free literature packages that are available download-only to save space on CD's. Jesse -- Jesse Jacobsen, Pastor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Grace Lutheran Church (ELS) http://www.jvlnet.com/~jjacobsen/ Madison, Wisconsin GnuPG public key ID: 2E3EBF13
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On 24 Sep 1999, Siggy Brentrup wrote: In my understanding the bible packages belong into contrib *at best*, since it's value to the public is at least questionable if not offensive to muslims, buddhists(no not to them), hindus ... Um, I'm a Hindu, a Shastri (Hindu priest) actually. And I find nothing offensive or questionable about the Bible. If this debate is going to degenerate into prejudice (and history shows it will) kindly stick to your own prejudices and don't try and speak for others. That's what Christians are often accused of! :-) The criterion should be utility. The Bible as a literary and cultural foundation of Western civilization will be useful to a lot more people than the Anarchism package. Nevertheless it is moot point because we are running out of room and there has to be a third CD. It might as well contain all the documents and other packages non-essential to using an OS. Here's another idea. What about putting all the non-essential compilers, includes and other development tools on the extra CD too. They take up a lot of room and does the average Debian user really need an eiffel compiler or the IMAP development kit? gcc, libc6-dev perl etc. would remain in the core because they are needed for compiling the kernel and other major components of Debian. Problems with this idea are it might leave a bad taste in the mouths of people who remember how the commercial Unix's started unbundling development tools and our constituency is probably more interested in esoteric programming stuff than your average consumer. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
Taking the risk to burn like hell: I think the exhaustive exploration of ANY political theory and practice is VERY misplaced in ANY Linux distribution. I would say the same thing about The top 1000 FAQ on home-made apple pie, but nobody has packaged that (yet). To give a positive formulation: documentation and data packaged in ANY Linux distribution should either directly relate to (at least) computing in general or be the input to an also-packaged program (that does more with it than a little bit of formatting so it reads nicer). Well, it looks like the Anarchist FAQ debate has come to life once again. Just for the record, I packaged this for a number of reasons, including: - It interests me - It interests many geeks (to use the katzian term) whom I know - It's a GPL-licensed, open project. I'm fully willing to move the document to the data section when it comes into existence, but in the mean time it will live in main, along with the other non-computer-related electronic texts. For free software, ed.
Useless packages (was Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb)
On Fri, Sep 24, 1999 at 05:59:27PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: Nevertheless it is moot point because we are running out of room and there has to be a third CD. It might as well contain all the documents and other packages non-essential to using an OS. Here's another idea. What about putting all the non-essential compilers, includes and other development tools on the extra CD too. They take up a lot of room and does the average Debian user really need an eiffel compiler or the IMAP development kit? Instead of each developer chose what packages are and aren't useful to them, why don't we look at the popularity contest? A simple, bias-free way of seperating programs on to the CD's, by actual use. That is what it was made for. David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
anarchism_7.7-1.deb
I suggest renaming anarchist_7.7-1.deb to anarcho-communism_7.7-1.deb or throwing it out of distribution cause it have nothing to do with real anarchy and make mess in peoples' minds someone who doesnt really know what anarchy is after reading this doc will found anarchy stupid and anarchist morons I dont think anarchy is stupid nor anarchists are morons This FAQ is more propaganda document in fight between anarcho-communists against anarcho-capitalists than roasonable source of knowledge about what it claims to describe
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: I suggest renaming anarchist_7.7-1.deb to anarcho-communism_7.7-1.deb or throwing it out of distribution cause it have nothing to do with real anarchy and make mess in peoples' minds someone who doesnt really know what anarchy is after reading this doc will found anarchy stupid and anarchist morons I dont think anarchy is stupid nor anarchists are morons This FAQ is more propaganda document in fight between anarcho-communists against anarcho-capitalists than roasonable source of knowledge about what it claims to describe ???! I didn't believe it, but yes: it's there. Taking the risk to burn like hell: I think the exhaustive exploration of ANY political theory and practice is VERY misplaced in ANY Linux distribution. I would say the same thing about The top 1000 FAQ on home-made apple pie, but nobody has packaged that (yet). To give a positive formulation: documentation and data packaged in ANY Linux distribution should either directly relate to (at least) computing in general or be the input to an also-packaged program (that does more with it than a little bit of formatting so it reads nicer). Bjorn Brill [EMAIL PROTECTED] Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
I agree with you, and wish we'd toss all non-relevant packages out, or at least move them into the data section. (That said, I think stuff like coastline data that we could use to make maps would be okay for the data section; Where do I draw the line? Well, can you at least compute the stuff? Or simply read it?) Peter Bjoern Brill wrote: On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: I suggest renaming anarchist_7.7-1.deb to ???! I didn't believe it, but yes: it's there. documentation and data packaged in ANY Linux distribution should either directly relate to (at least) computing in general or be the input to an also-packaged program (that does more with it than a little bit of formatting so it reads nicer).
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Thu, Sep 23, 1999 at 08:52:41PM +0200, Bjoern Brill wrote: Taking the risk to burn like hell: I think the exhaustive exploration of ANY political theory and practice is VERY misplaced in ANY Linux distribution. I would say the same thing about The top 1000 FAQ on home-made apple pie, but nobody has packaged that (yet). IIRC, it was this very package that prompted the last discussion about setting up a data section. What came of that? -- Mark Brown mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Trying to avoid grumpiness) http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/ EUFShttp://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/ pgphEt7v9tvpS.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Peter S Galbraith wrote: I agree with you, and wish we'd toss all non-relevant packages out, or at least move them into the data section. (That said, I think stuff like coastline data that we could use to make maps would be okay for the data section; Where do I draw the line? Well, can you at least compute the stuff? Or simply read it?) Geographic data would be OK if there's a program packaged that could draw maps (is this formatting?) or tell the shortest distance from some point to the coast or read GPS data from a serial line and show you where you are etc. Otherwise I'd say there are specialized research servers on the net for astronomic, genetic, geographic, statistic and the like data (although I'm personally very interested in some of these). Formal requirements tend to produce a lot of borderline cases, but a little bit of common sense is usually enough to solve them. The difference between a real distribution and a 10 CD roast from ftp.*.edu is that somebody has taken care of the configuration, integration and proper interaction of the components. Dumping 3 MB of do-with-it-what-you-want into the FHiloSophically right place of the file system doesn't require that. Yours, Bjorn Brill [EMAIL PROTECTED] Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Re: anarchism_7.7-1.deb
Mark Brown wrote: IIRC, it was this very package that prompted the last discussion about setting up a data section. What came of that? I got no reponses from the following post to debian-policy two weeks ago: To: debian-policy@lists.debian.org Subject: Data section accepted a while ago. What's next? Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 14:42:51 -0400 From: Peter S Galbraith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Accepted Amendments Data section (#38902) * Consensus. * Proposed on 3 Jun 1999 by Darren O. Benham; seconded by Peter S Galbraith and Peter Makholm. * Since there is interest in packaging census data, maps, genome data and other huge datasets I and since most people agreed that dropping them in main or contrib is not a great idea, I propose the creation of a data section to reside along side of main, contrib and non-free. Includes rules about what goes in this section. So what now? The ftp maintainers create the section and we start to upload packages for it? -- Peter Galbraith, research scientist [EMAIL PROTECTED] Maurice Lamontagne Institute, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada P.O. Box 1000, Mont-Joli Qc, G5H 3Z4 Canada. 418-775-0852 FAX: 775-0546 6623'rd GNU/Linux user at the Counter - http://counter.li.org/
