Re: RH and GNOME

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> On Tue, Jul 21, 1998 at 08:53:24PM +0100, Jules Bean wrote:
> [...] 
> > I hardly think that deserves an answer.  There have been many occasions
> > when I've wished I could use an rpm (yes, I know about alien), and some
>                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > commercial stuff is distributed as rpms (not that I use commercial
> > software personally when I can avoid it - but this provides value to our
> > users).
> 
> So, what's wrong with alien? I've used it to install some commercial
> RPMs for people in may group, and it has worked flawlessly.
> What else do you want? Why would anyone need a f* unified package
> format, if he have the tools to convert from whatever to its native
> package format without losing functionality? (Now, go and ask that to
> all those standard-writers out there).

That's fine, as long as the LSB rpm ``standard'' is forked from the Redhat, 
and other distrib's rpm ``standard'', so that either party can make
modifications without affecting the other.

Otherwise two negative consequences could arise:

  1)  If Redhat decides to modify rpm, and those changes are allowed to creep
   into the LSB rpm's by default, other distributions will have to play 
   catch-up, and software vendors will have a moving target to aim at.

  2)  If some feature is found to be missing from Redhat .rpm's, there will
   be significant pressure on the LSB to work around the deficiency, rather
   than fixing it in the LRP .rpm branch.

For that reason, I think that LSB packages should be called .lsb's even if the 
format is in fact .rpm internally, and then all distributions that want to be 
LSB compliant can agree to support .lsb format, as defined in the LSB 
standard, rather than as defined by whatever Redhat happens to be using this 
week.

This would mean that if Redhat modified their .rpm format, they'd still have
to maintain .lsb tools to install the original format.  The chaos that 
would have ensued at this point otherwise would then be avoided.

It would also mean that LSB could decide to add, or drop features from the rpm 
format they are using for .lsb packages, without having to beg Redhat to adopt 
those changes (except in the tools they provide for dealing with .lsb 
packages).

This should allow more room for innovation on both sides than would otherwise 
be the case.

Cheers, Phil.



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