On 05-Jun-04, 09:30 (CDT), Eduard Bloch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Wrong, it is a waste. You do not only add ONE 14k .deb, you add a 17k
> source plus dsc plus orig plus diff plus 10*14kB (for each arch, and
> maybe more than that), and, last but not least, you make apt and dpkg
> slower for EVERYONE even if many people do not care about some cute toy
> for some weird WM.
Let's see, I have no use for an IRC client, and they all share the same
code base, therefore all but one of them should be eliminated? That's an
interesting theory.
There are lots of near-duplicate packages in Debian, and lots of
packages with very limited audiences. We have a long established policy8
of allowing any package to be added, so long as it's maintained and
legal to distribute. That's part of what makes Debian kind of neat, I
think. Yes, it makes the package files huge. There have been all kinds
of proposals to make downloading those less painful, but nobody seems to
care enough to actually implement any of them.
If you are going to go on a rampage against "waste" packages, I can
think of better places to start than minor 18kb applets. Consider,
perhaps, the functional duplication of GNOME and KDE...
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
