-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Fri, 13 Aug 1999, Russell Nelson wrote:
> Linuxconf uses the GPL. Is there some non-technical reason why there > is no Debian package for Linuxconf? (I just have this idea that > Debian suffers from NIH -- dare I say "RPM"?) > Apparently linuxconf is included with potato (debian 2.2, which is in development). IMHO this is really not a good thing, because linuxconf has a nasty tendancy to create scripts that are easily machine parsable but are absolutely unreadable to humans. One of Debians greatest assets is its remote, console based admin capability. To me, linuxconf really breaks this. I don't think it's fair at all to say that Debian suffers from the NIH syndrome. Did we write sendmail, apache, emacs, or perl? RedHat didn't write linuxconf (in fact, linuxconf is incompatible with redhat's own "AnotherLevel" config tool (I think that's the right name)). So it's not like we've got a problem with stuff written by people doing work for other distributions. And there are fundamental reasons why we use something other than RPM. The Debian package format is inherently better. This has been debated by the developers quite often. Somebody else can probably give you a more detailed history of this issue. But it's definitely safe to say that the fact that we're not using RPM has nothing to do with the fact that Redhat wrote it. noah PGP public key available at http://lynx.dac.neu.edu/home/httpd/n/nmeyerha/mail.html or by 'finger -l [EMAIL PROTECTED]' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBN7Q6eodCcpBjGWoFAQEMyQP7BrsuU01u/TVkWr7s3cWYFa559HmSpk+E aG0Zu5H42Hd0Qj8QVUJbBmEw7afA1i3ANsIrmNMICMsaX5PtCdLUGRI66SxHmK4z KkV1MmnEnVOLF/f4R1MKFCIZSP9nP6Nz+S8NaU1Kf8UVL8lASBBeGLvlsVAOJHoZ EdP+NPy/dZE= =ZBLV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
