On Thu, Jul 01, 1999 at 08:37:17PM +0200, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: > a) It is legal, so you have no right to complain. > b) _We_ test the code, so _we_ know when it is ready. > c) Our users demands it. It might be legal, but it's a deplorable attitude. > would be nice if some ethical guidelines among packagers could be > developed to supplement the current Debian rules, like: First, words like "never" are going to cause problems. > > 1) _Never_ distribute alpha releases. add, as default. There are cases where you might want to distribute development versions... Libraries are an example. > 2) _Never_ distribute improved versions. I assume you mean, "with added major features" or "with any changes" > 3) _Never_ distribute with different "user preference" options > than the default. This is one of the main issues that makes one distribution better than another. To take an example, various IRC clients usually come with a default server to where ever the author normally chats but it would be better for Debian if the default server was set to irc.us.debian.org #debian, instead. > While this may make the individual distribution "worse" on the short > term, having the code released by the developers being as close as > possible to the code used by the users should improve the quality of > the feedback from users to developers, and improve the quality of the > code for everybody on a slightly longer term. Why not change the license to match the desires of the team? A better solution is for any distributor who modifies the software in some way becomes a liason between the developer and the user of that particular package. The packager can decide what issues are a result of his changes and what is an "upstream" issue. Of course, this only works when the software developers are willing to work with packagers... -- Please cc all mailing list replies to me, also. ========================================================================= * http://benham.net/index.html <gecko@benham.net> <>< * * -------------------- * -----------------------------------------------* * Debian Developer, Debian Project Secretary, Debian Webmaster * * <gecko@debian.org> <secretary@debian.org> <lintian-maint@debian.org> * * <webmaster@debian.org> <gecko@fortunet.com> <webmaster@spi-inc.org> * =========================================================================
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