Goal of Debian is to the best free distribution there is. Some place more emphasis on best and some on free, but in cases like this there is no doubt, the other package is: - more free - better (Debian) maintained - actively developed - less buggy so leaving this out will increase both freeness and quality without sacrificing functionality.
If somebody really cares one can look if there is some functionality in playmidi that is not offered by timidity. Now a question: Is there a clean way (other than release notes) to direct the user of playmidi to installing and using timidity? I know all sorts of packaging trickery can be used to replace a package with another, but this leaves two points open: informing the user and letting user remove the old package. Also a note: If we remove playmidi from woody could we at least update the description in potato to say it is going to be removed, please use timidity instead. We could also use some installation script trickery to inform the existing users of this change e.g. by an installation message, a message requiring press of <RET>, or mail to admin. All but the first one are contrary the current trend of making installation and upgrade less interactive. Probably this question should be taken up on some other forum like -devel or -policy? t.aa Raphael Hertzog <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sat Jan 22, 2000 12:08 PM > > Le Sat, Jan 22, 2000 at 09:55:31AM +0100, Thierry Laronde écrivait: > > So my question : what is Debian-qa team's policy about this ? > > Do you > > prefer to have less packages, but the *best* (freeness, > > usefullness, > > actively maintained and developed ---I personnaly prefer a usefull > > non-free one to a useless absolutely free beast), or do you > > think that > > we must have the largest choice, each package being > > maintained as good > > as it can be? > > If someone wants to maintain a package like playmidi then we > let it. But > if the package is not maintained and is quite buggy and if we > have other > better alternatives, then we should simply drop it. > > I suggest that you fill a bug report against ftp.debian.org > and ask them > to remove the package.
