On Fri January 14 2011 22:06:21 Christian PERRIER wrote: > You're right. No Debian developer is involved in large institutions or > corporations where hundreds of such servers are in use. All Debian > developers are kids playing on their parents' computer to build a > distro, during hacking nights, instead of doing their home work and > learn at school.
You're mistaken Christian. Most Debian developers are dedicated individuals who work hard to provide an excellent and stable distribution. But there are indeed a few who abuse the Debian packaging system in order to force their unwanted software on the world. I know of two current examples - insserv and KDE 4. It is perfectly OK for people to package those softwares and to maintain them if they wish. And it is perfectly OK for people to choose to use softwares which have been packaged by Debian developers. It is not OK for people to use packaging tricks to force their softwares on people who don't want them. insserv breaks complex systems. It throws away years of DD work and substitutes a few inane and inadequate rules. It does so without adequate warning, and irreversibly. And the overrides are undocumented - tell me which locations are for Debian packaging and which are for sysadmins in order to avoid conflicts? You can't because there is no policy. insserv would be laughable if it were not infecting Debian right now. Compared to the rest of the Debian core, insserv is Windows 1.0. It is so awful, in fact, that everyone knows that it will have to be replaced. But not until Squeeze+1. FOR A SERVER, ANY SERVER, WHICH MIGHT BE BOOTED ONCE A YEAR OR SO, THE RISK OF DOWNTIME DUE TO INSSERV LOSSAGE VASTLY OUTWEIGHS ANY POSSIBLE SAVINGS IN BOOT TIME. INSSERV SHOULD BE STRONGLY DEPRECATED, NOT RECOMMENDED, FOR SERVERS AND COMPLEX WORKSTATIONS. And KDE 4 is a well known and very old and very stale joke. Fun at parties, maybe, but not really appropriate for the workplace. Some people like these softwares. Use them if you wish. HONESTLY encourage people to use them if you wish. But don't force them on people. Don't trick people into using them by saying they're recommended when they can in fact be disastrous. The mere fact that they have to be forced on people shows just how awful they are. --Mike Bird -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201101142346.53380.mgb-deb...@yosemite.net
