Noah L. Meyerhans writes: > -----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.
If it breaks this, then linuxconf needs fixing. But that's more a matter of fixing linuxconf than rejecting it. It's okay if a GUI admin tool writes out structured configuration files, but it MUST be able to read in any modifications made by hand, and it SHOULD write configuration files which are human-readable. > 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. RPM has already been broken^H^H^H^H^H^Himproved once already. I don't see why it can't be improved to include any advantages that DEB has. I mean, in an era when XEmacs and GNU Emacs are talking about merging back, and egcs is becoming gcc-3.0, can't we all get along? > This has been debated by the developers quite often. Somebody else > can probably give you a more detailed history of this issue. I already asked, and didn't get one. But Colin Marquardt pointed me to http://kitenet.net/~joey/pkg-comp/ , which is better than nothing. -- -russ nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!
