Re: Bug#262507: ITP: resmgr -- resource manager library
On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 05:03:43PM +0200, Julien BLACHE wrote: > For those of you interested, I've uploaded resmgr 1.0-1 to > experimental (must go through NEW, etc.). > > I'll upload a version of sane-backends built with resmgr support to > experimental when sane-backends 1.0.15 will be released (end of next > week, IIRC). > > I plan to have SANE built with resmgr support for Etch, and I hope > other applications will support resmgr too. It can make life a lot > easier, and changes to the code are really minimal. It is, however, a security hole; it's functionally equivalent to pam_console (which we declined to ship in the past) and has the same problems. As such it's not really an improvement in security over making devices group- or world-accessible. resmgr must not be enabled by default and should carry a big warning; you can only use it in scenarios where you would be willing to use pam_console. (Why somebody bothered to implement resmgr instead of simply enhancing pam_console is beyond me; probably NIH) -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#262507: ITP: resmgr -- resource manager library
On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 08:46:18PM +0200, Julien BLACHE wrote: > >> I plan to have SANE built with resmgr support for Etch, and I hope > >> other applications will support resmgr too. It can make life a lot > >> easier, and changes to the code are really minimal. > > > > It is, however, a security hole; it's functionally equivalent to > > pam_console (which we declined to ship in the past) and has the same > > It's a bit better than pam_console, however, which has a lot of > issues. > > I uploaded to experimental to get some feedback on the possible > security issues/implications; I'm still trying to determine whether > there are holes (read: bigger holes than those which can exist with > other solutions) or not. > > Could you point out the security issues you see in resmgr ? The primary one is the same as pam_console: once you have an fd open, you can keep it open for as long as you like. So all the fancy restrictions on when you can open a device don't actually do anything; if you can open it at any time, you have effective access, reducing it to the same level of security as group permissions. (Doing something about this would require either a genuine userspace *proxy*, or kernel support; there's a few proposals floating around about how pam_console could have done it right). While it may make sense on some public terminals or demonstration systems, you do not want it on hosts where device security is important. [Also, it's a liability to have a process running as root which opens devices and then hands fds over to non-root processes; it could form part of a privilege escalation attack. So you don't want it running without a good reason]. > I note that SuSE ships resmgr and has a couple of resmgr-enabled > applications. Of course, RedHat ships pam_console, so that's not a > point (and they're having a whole lot of problems with it, again). Yes, they just don't care. Secure-by-default isn't really a priority for them. If you run a server on suse then resmgr is one of those things you have to go through and rip out, like pam_console on redhat. > - resmgrd isn't installed by default, you need to explicitly install >it (no dependencies, only a Recommends that could be downgraded to >a Suggests to avoid side-effects with some frontends to apt); I'd say that's the really important one; we need to keep it that way. > - resmgrd won't be started until configured (no default config >is shipped in the package, only an example config file); And that's probably a good idea too (along with documentation that clearly states what it does and does *not* do). > > (Why somebody bothered to implement resmgr instead of simply enhancing > > pam_console is beyond me; probably NIH) > > If you haven't already, you might want to read > <http://rechner.lst.de/~okir/resmgr/description.html> Yeah, they gave up on the puzzle of how to fix pam_console without really trying. It's not as hard as they made it look; mostly you just have to add hotplug support, and have pam_console itself record the current user in a file or process someplace. Quite ironically, the solutions to the problems they cite for pam_console are exactly the same as the solutions they implemented for resmgr. Hence I figure it was probably NIH. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 08:50:08PM +0200, Kalle Kivimaa wrote: > Even > though we shouldn't exclude offensive packages we have the right to > make moral judgements and try to keep the higher priorities > content-neutral. Moral judgements from a group as large and diverse as Debian are guaranteed to always have conflicting results. No matter what your position on an issue, somebody in the project disagrees with you. Get over it. The only genuinely neutral content is the output of /dev/random; all else is subjective. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 08:49:18AM +1100, Brian May wrote: > However, I get the impression that giving children access to nude > pictures is generally considered wrong in a number of different > cultures and countries. > > This is different from the Bible - if you find the bible offensive you > don't have to install it. > > If you don't want your kids to install nude pictures, they might find > it on a source you hadn't anticipated (a Debian CD of all things) and > install it without your permission. Anybody who can't obtain porn using only the tools provided on a Debian CD is a total moron. You might as well complain that the internet is bad, just because it's primarily used as a vehicle for delivering porn. [And that's without even starting on this insane notion that trying to stop kids from seeing porn is somehow a good idea] -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 11:47:47PM +, Will Newton wrote: > On Wednesday 01 Dec 2004 22:15, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > Anybody who can't obtain porn using only the tools provided on a > > Debian CD is a total moron. You might as well complain that the > > internet is bad, just because it's primarily used as a vehicle for > > delivering porn. > > No. We are talking about "distributing" hot-babe. You didn't read the mail I was replying to, did you? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 02:07:45AM +0100, Jonas Meurer wrote: > but people should never be criticised or even discriminated for their > skin color, origin, gender, ... Gender is a choice. You just offended a whole bunch of transsexuals. If you're going to be a patronising hippie, at least get it right. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: ldap - a completely new method for fetching lists of packages?
On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 01:56:21PM -0500, sean finney wrote: > On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 12:03:27PM -0500, Simon Law wrote: > > On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 11:47:38AM -0500, sean finney wrote: > > > please, please treat this machine politely. it's my workstation and > > > i have no qualms with turning off slapd if it's getting in the > > > way :) > > > > If you're using OpenLDAP, there is no way that this could ever be fast. > > sounds like you have some experience with openldap too :) > > seriously though, i think it could in many situations... as it stands now, > apt has to refetch the Sources/Packages.gz files from every source > listed in sources.list. > > now, if the apt method kept a timestamp of the last successful update, > it could send as part of the ldap query filter something like > '(debTimeStamp>$lasttime)'. this would make keeping debian up to > date over dialup a much easier experience i imagine. Or you could just use something like rsync. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: OT: appealing to the puritan interest [was Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor]
On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 03:20:48PM -0500, Clint Adams wrote: > > You can't distribute text with the word "fuck" in it anywhere to minors in > > the > > US? > > > > Truly remarkable. Are there any minors reading this? Where do I hand myself > > in? > > Well, you would need to check the penal codes of each individual state > wherein such a minor resides; [...] > I don't > know how this applies to offenders from the UK. We tell them to fuck off. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activity monitor
> > >>>As already written in -women, this is the point which saddens me the > > >>>most in this thread. I'm really disappointed by seeing most > > >>>contributors just not realize why this package, as proposed, is > > >>>likely to hurt the feelings of several women (probably not all, I > > >>>don't know) as well as, indirectly or not, some men. (And quite stunningly failing to realise that objecting to this package in this manner is equally offensive in the other direction, and probably more so. I'm always entertained by the hypocrisy of these people). > > > Packages can hurts feelings? It's your big conclusion about it? Don't > > > matters for you the obvious detail about gender equality? > > > >requiring gender equality is obviosly pretty damn sexist. > > I can't see why. The whole free software concept brings an idea of > giving equal oportunities to everyone. How is it "equal opportunities" to say: "You can't do that unless you also find a woman who's willing to do it as well"? > Fortunately, as I said, the code > is available, and the equal oportunity for adding pictures that taste > good for each one actually do exist. > > That does not solve the problem, but makes it pretty easy to solve. The problem doesn't exist. There is no absence of opportunity here. There is only absence of action from some parties. Just because you elect not to engage in an action doesn't mean you can claim that nobody else should engage in that action. Not even under some misguided notion of "equality". If somebody was saying "We can have pictures of naked girls in the archive, but not naked men" then you *might* have a valid point. But they aren't. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Legal budget and Director-and-officer insurance related to packages with "adult" themes
On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 02:33:44PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > There are a few people who are most likely to be prosecuted over legal > issues in Debian packages that have "adult" themes. They are the SPI > directors, and those affiliated with any registration or incorporation > of SPI or Debian in countries other than the U.S. Oh come on, they're at far greater risk from our overly-permissive approach to copyright and patent issues. Any halfway decent lawyer could run rings around our review process; it's nothing like "due dillgance". I think the statutory punishments stand at tens of thousands of dollars and up to five years in jail, in the US at present. And there are people with legal muscle who have demonstrated a desire to make attacks on this front. If you're going to do something like this, at least get your priorities straight. If it's necessary for one thing then it's necessary for everything. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Legal budget and Director-and-officer insurance related to packages with "adult" themes
On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 07:14:07PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > Andrew Suffield wrote: > > >Oh come on, they're at far greater risk from our overly-permissive > >approach to copyright and patent issues. > > > The copyright and patent problems faced by Debian are issues that we > have studied in depth. Indeed, working on that has taken up a good deal > of my life for the past several years. We have resources lined up to > help us when it becomes a problem. > > In contrast, those resources aren't inclined to help us with the > questionable-material problem, and we have not researched it at all. If > we're going to make a stand about it, we'd better start learning. You go off and do that then, and leave the rest of us out of it like you did with the much more serious issue of copyright and patent laws. You evidently managed it once without any money (since we haven't got any), so clearly you can do it again. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#284283: ITP: fairuse -- spam filter based on sender identity verification
On Sat, Dec 04, 2004 at 11:51:29PM -0800, Stephen Birch wrote: > * License : Free for non-commercial use > > Subject to license verification (DFSG compliant): Non-commercial-use-only licenses are non-free. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activity monitor
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 09:34:36PM +1100, Ben Burton wrote: > > > > > >>>As already written in -women, this is the point which saddens me the > > > > >>>most in this thread. I'm really disappointed by seeing most > > > > >>>contributors just not realize why this package, as proposed, is > > > > >>>likely to hurt the feelings of several women (probably not all, I > > > > >>>don't know) as well as, indirectly or not, some men. > > > > (And quite stunningly failing to realise that objecting to this > > package in this manner is equally offensive in the other direction, > > and probably more so. > > Please humour me and spell it out for me in small words. I am > presumably missing something stunningly obvious. I find the notion of introducing censorship in order to not 'hurt their feelings' to be morally repugnant. It has been proven endless times that once you start doing this, you can't stop. For any package, there is going to be some minority group that is offended by it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 02:23:52PM +0100, Jonas Meurer wrote: > On 05/12/2004 James Foster wrote: > > Pornography may be offensive to some. Is the package description for > > hot-babe accurate? Are people who do not want it installed being > > forced to install it? > > > > People who may be offended by the package should read its description > > and make up their own mind about whether or not they would like to > > install it. > > > > [...] > > > > There's no excuse for censorship, ever. > > so you would even accept nazi propaganda material in debian, just > because you dislike censorship? Hell yes. This said it best, I think: [...] freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and one of the basic conditions for its progress and each individual's self-fulfilment. [...] it is applicable not only to "information" or "ideas" that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb. Such are the demands of pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness, without which there is no "democratic society". [Even if this 'democratic society' label is somewhat misnamed]. > in my eyes there shouldn't be any tolerance for intolerance, as you > woun't get respect in return. rather your tolerance will be exploited. Precisely. If we tolerate the intolerance of these people who are so terrified of images of the naked female form, then they will continue to exploit our tolerance. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 08:45:56AM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote: > On 05-Dec-04, 04:55 (CST), James Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > There's no excuse for censorship, ever. > > > > Okay everybody, repeat after me: Choosing not to distribute a given > package is NOT censorship. And telling somebody else that they can't distribute a given package IS censorship. You evidently have chosen not to do it. That's not censorship. You're presumably also trying to tell somebody else not to do it. That's censorship. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 03:55:27PM +, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > [...] freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential > > foundations of a democratic society and one of the basic conditions > > for its progress and each individual's self-fulfilment. > > > > [...] it is applicable not only to "information" or "ideas" that are > > favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of > > indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb. Such > > are the demands of pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness, without > > which there is no "democratic society". > > > > Debian is not a democratic society. You carefully deleted the part where I said that was a lousy name for it. The original authors have a 'democracy' fetish; they meant 'free'. > It is not intended to be a source of > all information known to man. It is supposed to be a project to produce > a Free operating system. That means: > > a) Things that are not useful should not be in there For a very weak definition of 'should', and a very broad definition of 'useful', sure. > b) Things that are gratuitously insulting to a large number of people > should not be there unless they're fantastically useful That's entirely arbitrary. You can't just make this stuff up. In no sense does this follow from the stuff quoted above. You've also introduced the undefined quantifiers 'gratuitously', 'insulting', 'large', and 'fantastically', so that can mean anything you want. > Having this argument over a program that is entirely useless in the > first place just makes it harder to have a proper discussion in the > cases where it actually matters. On the contrary, it makes it easier (you are aware that this is not the first time this subject has occurred?). > Or, putting it another way: failing to include this piece of code does > Debian no demonstrable harm. However, deliberately refusing to include it because of some people whining does Debian quite significant, demonstrable harm. It indicates that merely by whining loud enough you can eject arbitrary code from Debian. > Including it does. Can't see any. If you're trying to raise the old "Debian must attract more users" thing then we've been over it so many times already: Debian in no sense gains or loses from changes in its userbase of less than an order of magnitude. And it's only the accuracy of bug reporting that improves anyway. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 12:21:04PM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote: > On 05-Dec-04, 09:07 (CST), Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 08:45:56AM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote: > > > On 05-Dec-04, 04:55 (CST), James Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > There's no excuse for censorship, ever. > > > > > > > > > > Okay everybody, repeat after me: Choosing not to distribute a given > > > package is NOT censorship. > > > > And telling somebody else that they can't distribute a given package > > IS censorship. > > I haven't told anyone that they can't distribute it. We, Debian, can > choose not to distribute certain materials w/o it being censorship. You say it as if the whole project was in agreement about something. What is actually happening here is that one individual Debian developer is choosing to distribute a given package, and some other developers are trying to stop them. That's censorship. Even if they don't have the authority to do it (that just makes it ineffective censorship). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activity monitor
On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 08:52:59AM +1100, Ben Burton wrote: > > > I find the notion of introducing censorship in order to not 'hurt > > their feelings' to be morally repugnant. > > Yes yes, I understand why you don't like it. What I wanted was an > explanation of why objecting to this package was probably _more_ > offensive than proposing it. "Oh no, there's the possibility that somebody else might look at some low quality porn" versus "Other people are actively forcing their beliefs onto us". Isn't it obvious? > (Bearing in mind that in this context, "censorship" simply means not > shipping with debian, as opposed to attempting to deny access altogether.) That's what "censorship" means in every context, under any practical definition. It's impossible to deny access altogether to anything. > > It has been proven endless times that once you start doing this, you > > can't stop. For any package, there is going to be some minority group > > that is offended by it. > > Sounds to me like your problem is not so much with the objection, but with > its expected implementation. There's only one way this ever goes. Any student of history should be familiar with how this plays out. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Legal budget and Director-and-officer insurance related to packages with "adult" themes
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 04:23:25PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > I worked on the patent and copyright issues because Debian and indeed > all of Free Software would be up the river if people did not work on it. > I have arranged more than $120K of grants to work on this since leaving HP. > > That is not the case for packages with questionable images and dialogue. > I'm not volunteering, and neither are the people who gave me money. Then file a bug, but don't whinge about how other people aren't doing something that you care about. That's how Debian works. You do the stuff you're interested in (frequently without mentioning it to anybody else, in some cases). Your Chicken Little act is not impressing anybody. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: charsets in debian/control
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 09:32:00PM +0100, Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo wrote: > But the only field in UTF8 should be Maintainer, and that field should > have (IMHO) also a roman transliterate for the name, if you don't use a > latin charset (Greek, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese...) The transliterated field should be called 'Maintainer'. If you want some other freaky encoding, unsupported by the older tools, put it in a new field. Using the old field just breaks stuff for no reason. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Questionable image process. Was: Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- (abusive?) erotic images in Debian
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 05:15:50PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > >Somewhere else in the thread I made the point that people have to respect > >each other and that everyone using Debian is subject to local laws. > > > > > That is two different issues: > 1: Developers should respect each other. Which means not forcing their beliefs onto others. > 2: Developers in various localities can get in legal hot water due to > the conduct of other developers who don't run the same risk. That sounds pretty unlikely. The project does not exist as a legal entity (but rather uses quasi-independent holding companies like SPI) for this reason (as well as the logistical difficulties it would present). If your country routinely holds you responsible for the actions of people in other countries who you just happen to communicate with on occasion, or that you share interests with, then you really need to emigrate or revolt. Mine doesn't. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 08:33:54PM -0500, Josh Metzler wrote: > On Sunday 05 December 2004 08:25 pm, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 12:21:04PM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote: > > > On 05-Dec-04, 09:07 (CST), Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 08:45:56AM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote: > > > > > On 05-Dec-04, 04:55 (CST), James Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > > > > There's no excuse for censorship, ever. > > > > > > > > > > Okay everybody, repeat after me: Choosing not to distribute a given > > > > > package is NOT censorship. > > > > > > > > And telling somebody else that they can't distribute a given package > > > > IS censorship. > > > > > > I haven't told anyone that they can't distribute it. We, Debian, can > > > choose not to distribute certain materials w/o it being censorship. > > > > You say it as if the whole project was in agreement about something. > > > > What is actually happening here is that one individual Debian > > developer is choosing to distribute a given package, and some other > > developers are trying to stop them. That's censorship. Even if they > > don't have the authority to do it (that just makes it ineffective > > censorship). > > Actually, the developer is choosing to have Debian distribute a package, and > others are trying to stop Debian from distributing the package. Word games. Censorship is when a citizen of one body chooses to have that body distribute something (by being a citizen and distributing it), and another citizen tries to stop them. That body could be a country or it could be Debian. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activity monitor
On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 12:44:36PM +1100, Ben Burton wrote: > > > > It has been proven endless times that once you start doing this, you > > > > can't stop. For any package, there is going to be some minority group > > > > that is offended by it. > > > > > > Sounds to me like your problem is not so much with the objection, but with > > > its expected implementation. > > > > There's only one way this ever goes. Any student of history should be > > familiar with how this plays out. > > shrug. At least in .au we have some legislation to protect minority > groups but we're not living in a totalitarian PC clampdown. Sounds irrelevant. There's a big difference between 'protect minority groups' (from what?) and 'compel everybody to behave in a manner approved of by minority groups'. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Sacred Cows [was: Re: Debian's status as a legal entity and how it could effect a potential defense.]
On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 02:16:58AM -0500, William Ballard wrote: > On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 10:17:29PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > > Would you please stop asserting that I'm out to FUD you? Given my > > history I would hope that you could take for granted that I want what's > > best for the project. > > I love how Debian has no sacred cows. It's one of the reasons I > stuck around. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and some > people to be more equal than others. > > Everybody has their moments :-) You have to read the above in the context that Bruce's "history" is comprised of the immortal words "Fuck you all" and the deletion of our mailing list archives. Then it makes more sense. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian's status as a legal entity and how it could effect a potential defense.
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 10:38:51PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: > Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > That's true. Debian doesn't *have* to be mirrored *anywhere*. > > We do well to listen to what mirrors say, and what their concerns > are. But we do not do well to guess at what they might say, on the > basis of half-understood and unsupported claims about what their own > internal policies are. And throw this data point in: this university has apparently been distributing purity for a very long time. As usual, this policy is not seriously applied. It's there to cover the University in the case of a lawsuit, and to allow them to selectively apply it to people they want to get rid of (just about anybody can be effectively accused of violating the policy; it's almost impossible to go through the day without doing so). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian's status as a legal entity and how it could effect a potential defense.
Go away and don't come back until you have read the mailing list code of conduct. I do not need a second copy of this entire sodding thread. On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 09:01:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > Is Debian a legal entity? The answer is unquestionably yes. Where do you get these ideas? Debian is unquestionably not a legal entity. > An unincorporated association is what your organization is until you go > through a legal process to change it into something else. It is a legal > entity. It can sue and be sued, and its members can be criminally > prosecuted in connection with it. It passes most of its liability on to > the people associated with it. We don't have any hope of proving that > Debian is not an organization. Guilt by association went out with the middle ages, along with witch hunts. These days you cannot be held responsible for events beyond your control. And Debian was carefully built in a manner that prevents any question of one developer controlling another. This is precisely what we want and it's also precisely what we have. Debian is a loose aggregation of individuals who are individually responsible for their own actions. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 09:06:00PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > > > > What is actually happening here is that one individual Debian > > > > developer is choosing to distribute a given package, and some other > > > > developers are trying to stop them. That's censorship. Even if they > > > > don't have the authority to do it (that just makes it ineffective > > > > censorship). > > > > > > Actually, the developer is choosing to have Debian distribute a package, > > > and > > > others are trying to stop Debian from distributing the package. > > > > Word games. Censorship is when a citizen of one body chooses to have > > that body distribute something (by being a citizen and distributing > > it), and another citizen tries to stop them. > > Gah! Book publishers do not publish every manuscript that is sent > to them. Movie studios do not fund every screenplay sent to them. > Libraries, as has been mentioned before, don't buy every book. You seem to be suggesting that any case where an organisation doesn't publish something is not censorship. That's obviously wrong, because some of them *are* censorship. > Such choices are made *all the time*. It's the difference between > "editing" and "censoring". The difference being that editing is a choice made by the person doing the work, while censorship is a choice made by an otherwise unrelated person in the same organisation. Editing would be if the maintainer decided to remove the package. Censorship is when some other developer tries to force him. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activity monitor
On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 01:24:49PM +1100, Ben Burton wrote: > > > > shrug. At least in .au we have some legislation to protect minority > > > groups but we're not living in a totalitarian PC clampdown. > > > > Sounds irrelevant. There's a big difference between 'protect minority > > groups' (from what?) and 'compel everybody to behave in a manner > > approved of by minority groups'. > > The latter is often designed to achieve the former. > > So let me say then that we have some legislation in .au that in certain > contexts compels people to behave in a manner approved of by minority > groups, and yet we're not living in a totalitarian PC clampdown. Yet. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 09:25:31PM +0100, Andrea Bedini wrote: > Il giorno lun, 06-12-2004 alle 01:49 +0000, Andrew Suffield ha scritto: > > Word games. Censorship is when a citizen of one body chooses to have > > that body distribute something (by being a citizen and distributing > > it), and another citizen tries to stop them. > > This is not the case: one member of a community chooses to do something > on which community doesn't agree. So community decides to not follow his > member and *let him do what he wants by his own*. Debian should not do > everything a single developer wants to do; as a community we have to > find a general consensus on our policy. That's censorship. Know what you're advocating, and consider its implications. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#283578: ITP: hot-babe -- erotic graphical system activitymonitor
On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 04:51:59AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > > Editing would be if the maintainer decided to remove the > > package. Censorship is when some other developer tries to force him. > > If an ftp-master in the course of "doing the work" of processing NEW rejects > a package, or a member of the release team in the course of "doing the work" > of preparing the next stable release excludes a package from consideration, > is this editing, or is it censorship? All of those things could be either. It is precisely because the boundaries are not clear that we must stay away from them. That's the reason why everybody who starts down the path of censorship ends up in the same place. > It's extremely frustrating to see so many words spent on the notion of > "censorship" here. At the end of the day, Debian, *as an organization*, > has the right (and responsibility) to decide what it publishes on behalf of > its member developers, and doing so is *not* *censorship*. It can be. In the proposed scenario it would be. > And it's no wonder that Debian is slow to release when people are criticized > on public lists for showing an interest in the contents and quality of > packages that aren't theirs; for daring to ask the question, "is this > something that Debian needs?" Nobody in this thread has seriously asked that question. > This discussion shouldn't be about censorship, or other forms of coercion; Aye, but it is, and that line of thinking needs to be stopped while we still can. Frankly the package is irrelevant to this discussion, and the subject line is misleading. > And contrary to much of > the rhetoric in this thread, it is possible to think a package like hot-babe > is a bad idea without wanting to be set up as a censor for all ideas they > disagree with. However, it's extremely unlikely that it is possible to ban it for that reason without going down that path. There's a significant difference between thinking something is a bad idea and trying to stop it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: package rejection
On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 10:10:19AM +1100, Brian May wrote:
> I think it would be better to create a distribution of Debian, where
> applicable, that meets the legal requirements of the given country.
>
> That way if you do really want to distribute Debian where there are
> laws against XYZ, you can distribute a subset of Debian that doesn't
> {do,use,require,consume,kill,display,say,etc} XYZ.
> This also raises lots of issues, like how to do it with minimum fuss
> and who is legally responsible (if anybody) if mistakes occur.
Also, in much of the civilised world, once you start doing this you
suddenly acquire a legal responsibility to do it *right*, which you
wouldn't have had if you hadn't tried to do it.
Censorship laws are strange like that.
[Not likely to be a problem for us as a project, but it might be for
people who do this sort of thing. Commercial publishers run into this
problem all the time and often decide it's safer not to bother]
--
.''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
: :' : http://www.debian.org/ |
`. `' |
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Re: Linux Core Consortium
On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 01:42:57PM -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote: > Adrian von Bidder dijo [Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 04:38:10PM +0100]: > > > we don't exactly have a strong history of being able to pull off > > > timely releases > > > > Did Debian even try? > > > > I didn't follow the woody release too closely, being a Debian newbie at the > > time, so I don't know. But - this was my impression - from the start, > > sarge was prepared with the 'we release when we're ready' idea, which makes > > everybody feel that they have more than enough time. > > Yes, it did. Debian has long tried to shorten the release cycles, > without any success. That's the reason why Testing was introduced > (after Slink, IIRC). I got involved in Debian close to the Woody > release. We were quite optimist that Sarge would release in ~1 year Who was? Everybody with any sense knew that it wasn't going to happen. > There are many proposals to make Etch and future releases come out > sooner, please check them at > http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?ReleaseProposals Every single one of these falls into one of these four groups: (a) Give up (and maybe do something else entirely, like making unstable releases) (b) Split Debian into pieces, which we haven't tried before but we know won't make the pieces any easier to release (and what's the use of releasing a 'core' chunk early before there are any applications to run on it?) (c) Stuff that we've tried before and abandoned (like freezing unstable) (d) Stuff that isn't related to making releases faster -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Pre-Depends on emacs21? Re: cedet-common: breaks other packages in batch mode
On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 11:25:49AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > Bug #270388 regards the cedet-common package breaking emacs -batch. A > proposed fix in the bug report is for cedet-common to Pre-Depend on emacs21 > | emacsen instead of depending on it. > > An NMU based on this proposed fix has already been uploaded to the DELAYED > queue by Henning Glawe without first discussing on debian-devel as required > by policy. I'm therefore posting this message to get a reasonable set of > eyeballs on this issue. > > For my part, I think a Pre-Depends here is crude and inappropriate, as other > comments in the log suggest to me that this is a remediable bug in > cedet-common's startup code; but I haven't dug into it far enough to say for > sure. That seems like an accurate description. No Pre-Depends needed here, fix the damn bug instead. Should be a trivial addition of a conditional somewhere. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: LCC and blobs
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 12:15:31PM +, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Blars Blarson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > >>How does moving firmware from the disk to the hardware (therefore making > >>it harder to modify and more expensive) further the cause of free > >>software? > > > > It makes it covered by the hardware manufacturers warentee. If it is > > faulty, you can return it for repair or refund. > > Under UK law, I have the same rights with faulty software. Do other > jurisdictions actually treat software and hardware differently in this > respect? UK law is abnormal in that we blast through those 'ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY' clauses in software licenses with the Sale of Goods act. In most places those hold (because the 'licensed, not sold' thing lets them specify almost arbitrary terms). We're considered unusually socialist for holding people responsible for selling goods as advertised (rather than considering it 'reasonable' to sell a box containing a piece of paper that says it's not their fault if the software doesn't work, or indeed completely fails to be inside the expensive box when you open it). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Why firmware generally won't be Free Software
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 08:14:40AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > If we ask for the embedded programming in the devices to be open as > well, we are essentially asking for the hardware design below the bus > level to be opened. This is fine for a restricted subset of vendors that > are designing explicitly for Open Source such as GNURadio and OpenCores. > But most manufacturers won't go for it. This is the argument that says free software is impossible. It's been demonstrated to be bullshit. Come on, this argument is from the 1980s, and your side *lost* in the real world. Free software is here. We'll do it again if we have to. They can open their specifications or we'll fucking implement around them and eventually drive them out of the market. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 11:07:35AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > It will take fund-raising to do it. Bullshit. There goes that "free software is impossible" argument again. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 11:21:54AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > My surmise is that we'd need an effort like that, raising $250K, to > design and go to full-custom fabrication of an FPLA with fully-open > design. Mine is that one can get useful things done without having to spend ridiculous amounts of money, or even any money at all. Yours is that you can't. Debian proves you wrong every day. There is absolutely no reason why any money is needed for this. Design the damn thing. Somebody will want to produce it. Manufacturing companies would *leap* at the opportunity to make widely desireable chips with zero royalty costs. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 03:57:19PM -0500, Brendan wrote: > On Monday 13 December 2004 14:50, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 11:21:54AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > > > My surmise is that we'd need an effort like that, raising $250K, to > > > design and go to full-custom fabrication of an FPLA with fully-open > > > design. > > > > Mine is that one can get useful things done without having to spend > > ridiculous amounts of money, or even any money at all. Yours is that > > you can't. Debian proves you wrong every day. > > What does that have to do with hardware, please? > I mean, it's a lovely statement and all, but it's wrong. Right back at you. > > There is absolutely no reason why any money is needed for this. Design > > the damn thing. Somebody will want to produce it. Manufacturing > > companies would *leap* at the opportunity to make widely desireable > > chips with zero royalty costs. > > "Somebody" and "widely desirable". > > Ok, do it and report back, soldier. I don't care about it. It's the people who want it done badly enough to whine about it on public mailing lists who should go do it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 08:43:37AM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote: > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 07:50:02PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 11:21:54AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > > > My surmise is that we'd need an effort like that, raising $250K, to > > > design and go to full-custom fabrication of an FPLA with fully-open > > > design. > > > > Mine is that one can get useful things done without having to spend > > ridiculous amounts of money, or even any money at all. Yours is that > > you can't. Debian proves you wrong every day. > > > > There is absolutely no reason why any money is needed for this. Design > > the damn thing. Somebody will want to produce it. Manufacturing > > companies would *leap* at the opportunity to make widely desireable > > chips with zero royalty costs. > > Manufacturing an ASIC involves NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs > of hundreds of thousands to millions per revision. A manufacturing > company is going to need to see a pretty good market before they > invest that in an open design. Manufacturing an operating system involves NRE costs of hundreds of thousands to millions per revision. Oh, wait. Actually, that's just *one* way of doing it. And yet you're quoting Redmond propaganda as if it were the only truth. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 02:13:53PM -0600, Kenneth Pronovici wrote: > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 07:50:02PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 11:21:54AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: > > > My surmise is that we'd need an effort like that, raising $250K, to > > > design and go to full-custom fabrication of an FPLA with fully-open > > > design. > > > > Mine is that one can get useful things done without having to spend > > ridiculous amounts of money, or even any money at all. Yours is that > > you can't. Debian proves you wrong every day. > > > > There is absolutely no reason why any money is needed for this. Design > > the damn thing. Somebody will want to produce it. Manufacturing > > companies would *leap* at the opportunity to make widely desireable > > chips with zero royalty costs. > > I think what you're forgetting (or at least ignoring) is that designing > hardware is not exactly like designing software. The process is > similar, yes, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. At the > least, this is because testing your hardware "implementation" is not > "free" (as in beer). Any commercial software company will tell you exactly the same thing about software: testing is not free. We're *still* here. Consider why this works (without resorting to things which are obviously not true, like "current hardware doesn't ship with (many) known bugs", or "proprietary software is more reliable"). > I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, just realistic. I think that you > should be careful not to underestimate these fairly significant > differences between hardware and software. I think you're "underestimating" the difficulty of creating software. The difference is merely that you happen to be familiar with a more effective way to do it. Your point is quite amusing because historically any commercial organisation would have told you the exact opposite: Software is far more expensive to produce than hardware, by several orders of magnitude. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 08:57:20PM -0600, Kenneth Pronovici wrote: > And no, I can't confirm or refute the numbers, which is why *I* didn't > comment on whether they were realistic. You might want to try that > sometime. I cannot figure out what mail you were reading. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 09:20:53PM -0600, Kenneth Pronovici wrote: > > > I think what you're forgetting (or at least ignoring) is that designing > > > hardware is not exactly like designing software. The process is > > > similar, yes, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. At the > > > least, this is because testing your hardware "implementation" is not > > > "free" (as in beer). > > > > Any commercial software company will tell you exactly the same thing > > about software: testing is not free. We're *still* here. Consider why > > this works (without resorting to things which are obviously not true, > > like "current hardware doesn't ship with (many) known bugs", or > > "proprietary software is more reliable"). > > The difference is that software testing is often "free" in a capital > sense. I can volunteer my time to test or write open source software, > and there is very little capital expense associated with it (my cable > modem, my electricity, my PC, etc., much of which has other uses in my > household). The commercial software companies use volunteers like this too, even on pure-proprietary stuff, and it's not what they're talking about when they say testing is expensive. > Testing hardware of this sort requires actually manufacturing it (which > is a capital expense) and requires various pieces of test equipment (the > purchase of which would also be a capital expense). One way or another, > someone will have to bear these expenses. And they say that about software too. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: If you really want Free firmware...
On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 11:27:45AM -0600, Kenneth Pronovici wrote: > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Hamish said, "Manufacturing an ASIC involves NRE...of hundreds of > thousands to millions per revision..." > > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > You said, "Manufacturing an operating system involves NRE costs of > hundreds of thousands to millions per revision... you're quoting Redmond > propoganda..." [This implied that Hamish's numbers were not valid.] > > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > (This is the message you just replied to) > I said, "Do you have any actual hardware design experience to draw on > here...", in reply to your implication about Hamish's numbers. > > Clear now? Ah, you misinterpreted my point in quite an impressive way. Valid numbers or not, his statement was of the form "Here is how we do it, and our way is the only way in which it is possible to do it". And we've heard that one before. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Are mails sent to xxxx buildd.debian.org sent to /dev/null ?
On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 04:59:15PM -0600, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: > As it stands, 4 downloads for s390 appear somewhat disproportionate to > 1,285,422 for i386. s390 is a little special, because it's neither a desktop nor a server architecture, but rather a mainframe one. One software installation can service many thousands of users; these are the things IBM was talking about when they thought they would only sell five of them. So it will always be disproportionately low by this measure. Exactly how far different it is from the rest is difficult to tell. The other architectures don't have that excuse. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Ignoring the truth or Hiding problems?
On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 03:12:14PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote: > Le mercredi 05 janvier 2005 à 07:39 -0500, Glenn Maynard a écrit : > > While you're correct--Ingo should be using list-reply, not group-reply--it's > > also somewhat dubious to complain about receiving CC's on list mail when you > > havn't set up your MFT header to say you don't want them, list policy or no. > > (In other words, if he actually cares enough to complain about it, he should > > be able to set up your headers to say what he wants, too. It's a lot more > > time-effective, mail for mail, than trying to teach people how to use their > > MUA.) > > Mail-Followup-To is not part of any of the standards defining e-mail > protocols. Which just goes to show how useless and irrelevant these purported "standards" are. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: MPEG in general Was: Is anyone packaging `lame' ?
On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 11:32:41AM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: > > Is only MPEG Layer III patent encumbered ? > > How about the other MPEG stuff ? > > I find it hard to believe that it is all patent-free. > > It's all encumbered with patents. Encoders *and* decoders. Encoders only, not decoders. Decoders for anything probably cannot be patented. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: MPEG in general Was: Is anyone packaging `lame' ?
On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 01:56:43PM +0100, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote: > On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 12:06:53PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > > Is only MPEG Layer III patent encumbered ? > > > > How about the other MPEG stuff ? > > > > I find it hard to believe that it is all patent-free. > > > > > > It's all encumbered with patents. Encoders *and* decoders. > > > > Encoders only, not decoders. Decoders for anything probably cannot be > > patented. > > Really? AFAIR every producent of mobile mp3 player had to pay patent > grants, to be able to distribute his device. They'll only sell you licenses to the encoder patents if you pay them for your decoders as well. That's not the same thing. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: MPEG in general Was: Is anyone packaging `lame' ?
On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 01:01:53PM +, Will Newton wrote: > On Saturday 08 Jan 2005 12:56, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote: > > > > > It's all encumbered with patents. Encoders *and* decoders. > > > > > > Encoders only, not decoders. Decoders for anything probably cannot be > > > patented. > > > > Really? AFAIR every producent of mobile mp3 player had to pay patent > > grants, to be able to distribute his device. > > And every set top box manufacturer pays for their MPEG-2 (or MPEG-4) > licenses. Those are the patents for the transport mechanisms. Still not the decoders. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: MPEG in general Was: Is anyone packaging `lame' ?
On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 04:03:37PM +, Will Newton wrote: > On Saturday 08 Jan 2005 15:46, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > > And every set top box manufacturer pays for their MPEG-2 (or MPEG-4) > > > licenses. > > > > Those are the patents for the transport mechanisms. Still not the decoders. > > Sigh. You seem to have a talent for picking subjects for argument that you > know nothing about. Your talent appears to be argumentum ad hominem... > Go study the licensing scheme and patent portfolio for > MPEG-2 and tell me how you can get around the motion compensation and > prediction patents for example[1] or the alternate scan patents, By not encoding anything. These are patents on methods of encoding. (They also appear to have patents on various postprocess filtering methods, mostly in hardware; presumably the set-top box manufacturers license and use these as well). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: execturing libc
On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 11:27:32PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 06:17:01PM +1100, Paul Hampson wrote: > > > It still lets you execute files that don't have the executable flag > > > set like libc. It's a different bug but it's still there. > > > Is that a bug? I can run -x perl scripts with perl so > > why not -x ELF scripts with /lib/ld-linux.so.2 > > > What stops me taking a copy of the binary, making it +x and running > > that anyway? So I don't see any security concern... > > Not having write access to any media that's not marked noexec? > > But I agree that the security benefits are trivial on a system where > users have access to perl. Or bash, that's enough to do it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: "The Debian exim 4 packages suck badly" on exim-users@exim.org
On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 09:04:59PM -0600, Donald J Bindner wrote: > When you compile a kernel and check the help on a module, you'll > never find "If unsure, don't say Y." Something to think about... That's because the string is "If unsure, say N". [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/src/linux-2.6.10$ grep unsure * -r | grep Kconfig | egrep -c "say '?Y" 148 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/src/linux-2.6.10$ grep unsure * -r | grep Kconfig | egrep -c "say '?N" 366 So much for that theory. Testing it took no more than a couple of minutes; you could have done that yourself and saved us all the time of a couple of mails. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [debian-devel] Re: FW: A Call to Action in OASIS
On Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 02:53:49PM +, Magos?nyi ?rp?d wrote: > A levelez?m azt hiszi, hogy Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader a > következ?eket Ãrta: > > * Jaldhar H. Vyas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-02-23 09:18]: > > > > A Call to Action in OASIS > > > Debian has a representative in OASIS doesn't it? > > > > Yes (Mark Johnson); I already mailed him to ask for his comments. > > I would be happy if Debian would do everything possible against > standards covered by patents. > > It is our essential interest. I would not, and it isn't. There is a wide variety of things possible to do against standards covered by patents that would not be a good idea, including but not limited to writing licenses that are non-free out of a misguided attempt to prohibit them. This isn't an academic concern, it's a real problem that we've been facing for quite some time now. Action based on rational evaluation of the consequences *only*, please. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Updating config files: permissions!?
On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 12:12:31AM +0100, Torsten Landschoff wrote: > During upgrades the slapd package (for example) has to do some > adjustments on config files (it asks the user for permission of course). > > Problem: How do I make sure the new config files have the same > permissions!? Currently I do > > chmod --reference=OLD NEW > chown --reference=OLD NEW > mv NEW OLD > > but this will break with ACLs. And what happens with SELinux!? Can't > find anything in debian-policy about it, shouldn't we define that > handling? You can't solve this problem atomically. However, you can do this: mv OLD TMP cat NEW > TMP mv TMP OLD rm NEW Which is almost as good. The point being that rather than create a new file, you truncate the old one and replace its contents (but avoid ever leaving a half-populated file in place; no file is better than a mangled file). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: dehs will stop
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 01:35:40AM -0300, Lucas Wall wrote: > Now that you have this information, do you think dehs could be useful? > Do others think something like dehs could be useful? As a general tool? Maybe, but how is it better than uscan, which it duplicates? As a website? No, not really. It's slow and doesn't present any views on the information that are particularly useful and it's completely immune to shell scripting. A web interface would appear to be the wrong way to do this. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: self-depending packages
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 12:06:06PM +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: > On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 11:58:14AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote: > > Does it? The last time I was faced with that issue, the starting point > > chosen was random and unpredictable. > > It does. (I've hacked the code.) Unfortunately apt breaks the code. If you use dpkg directly it'll work. If you use apt it'll pick a random and unpredictable starting point. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: self-depending packages
On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 09:49:41PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: > On 20050228T164806+0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > Unfortunately apt breaks the code. If you use dpkg directly it'll > > work. If you use apt it'll pick a random and unpredictable starting > > point. > > Doesn't apt usually unpack all packages first and then configure them in > one run, so that shouldn't matter? dpkg does the same thing -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#298195: ITP: tinywm -- Ridiculously tiny window manager
On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 01:17:50AM +0900, Nobuhiro Iwamatsu wrote: > Package: wnpp > Severity: wishlist > Owner: Nobuhiro Iwamatsu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > * Package name: tinywm > Version : 1.2.0 > Upstream Author : Nick Welch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > * URL : http://incise.org/ > * License : fair license That's not a free license. In fact, it's about as non-free as you can get, since it's essentially "all rights reserved"; there's no permission to modify or redistribute at all. We can't distribute this, even in non-free. Here's the text: Use of the works is permitted provided that this instrument is retained with the works, so that any entity that uses the works is notified of this instrument. DISCLAIMER: THE WORKS ARE WITHOUT WARRANTY. Usual example of why random people should not be writing licenses. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Not every package should enter Debian (was: Re: Who cares about NEW when there are bigger issues? (was Re: Is NEW processing on hold? (was: Question for candidate Towns)))
On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 07:42:58PM +0100, Adrian von Bidder wrote: > IMHO, Debian has a serious double-problem here and needs to attack it. > ftp-masters should, as I understand the role, be a purely administrative > function: keep the archive running. No policy decisions should be made by > ftp-masters. > > In that light, fully automatic NEW processing will not hurt at all (I agree > that a delay of a few days is sensible to give us time to react to the > worst problem cases.) Unfortunately reality isn't so simple. In practice, the ftp-masters have also become the review point for new packages. We *need* new packages reviewing just to filter out some of the worst of the stupid from the archive; frankly we need more than just new packages reviewing. However, splitting that task out would probably be a good idea. > Ok, that's the easy technical bit that gets rid of manual NEW processing > alltogether. Now, the second question: How do we tell what should be > included in Debian and what not? > > There is no obvious answer. So the project has to decide on some arbitrary > standards - but I think it has been proven that decisions on a case by case > basis does not work - the pr0n debate comes up regularly, and as soon as > that's started somebody drags religion and politics into it and we have a > 300-mails thread. Well, that's mostly because religion and politics are the only reasons people ever object to 'pr0n' in the first place :P But since those would exclude so much of the archive already, they really can't be allowed as criteria. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: status of buildds?
On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 04:51:29PM +0100, Ingo Juergensmann wrote: > On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 04:14:22PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > > The step for you to become trusted is easy: apply for NM. A few years > > ago, I would've happily become your advocate. This /must/ mean you're > > trustworthy, even though you're not trusted yet. After all, trustworthy > > means 'deserving our trust' whereas trusted means 'getting our trust'. > > The two are very different. > > True... for some aspects... > > Either you trust me as a person or you trust some kind of software snippet, > aka gpg key. > To trust a person doesn't require any additional stuff. > And I don't see why you want to trust some kind of bytes on a disk more than > me as a person. Gah, what a load of gibberish. Trust is a 3-ary function of the form: trust :: Person -> Task -> Scenario -> Boolean And is defined as: trust p t s = (need_to_trust p t s) && (willing_to_trust p t s) It is not this, as you so absurdly claim: trust p t s = willing_to_trust p -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Stephen Frost MIA?
On Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 09:25:31AM -0600, Graham Wilson wrote: > On Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 08:48:44AM +0100, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: > > how about sending this to Frontdesk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or MIA, > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> instead of spamming debian-devel with that? > > Since when is a message that is on topic (or at least relevant) to > Debian development spam? Everything on -devel is spam these days, didn't you get the memo? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Size matters. Debian binary package stats
On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 08:27:36PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: > * Steinar H. Gunderson: > > > My comments are about the same as on IRC: > > > > - Disk space is cheap, bandwidth is cheap. > > Depends. Decent IP service costs a few EUR per gigabyte in most parts > of the world. I wish we could get it that cheap for my day job. What we have to pay to get useful bandwidth has more zeros in it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Size matters. Debian binary package stats
On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 09:56:27AM +0100, Olaf van der Spek wrote: > On 12/19/05, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 08:27:36PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote: > > > * Steinar H. Gunderson: > > > > > > > My comments are about the same as on IRC: > > > > > > > > - Disk space is cheap, bandwidth is cheap. > > > > > > Depends. Decent IP service costs a few EUR per gigabyte in most parts > > > of the world. > > > > I wish we could get it that cheap for my day job. What we have to pay > > to get useful bandwidth has more zeros in it. > > Are you paying > 10 $/gb? Heck yes, you can't get it that cheap unless you have no SLA (or one of those insulting SLAs that come with residential service, claiming that it doesn't have to work at all). And you can't get that at all on a pipe of any significant size (unless you're big enough to work out a peering agreement). We pay per month though, not per byte. > Where is it that expensive? UK. As a general rule, UK bandwidth prices are roughly five to ten times those of equivalent service in other EU countries. Not that you can get equivalent service. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Thoughts on Debian quality, including automated testing
On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 12:23:32PM +0100, Thomas Hood wrote: > I would support requiring team maintainership because TM will be > beneficial in almost all cases and making it a requirement it cuts off a > lot of useless discussion. Cute theory, gaping hole. Making a group of people responsible for something, rather than a single person, means that they can all spend all their time passing the buck and hoping that one of the others takes care of it, with the result that nobody does. Debian is a great example of this problem in practice. Most of the more significant teams show this problem to one degree or another. Common places where it appears are ftp-master, debian-admin, and scud. You get a lot of people able to meddle with something but none of them responsible for actually seeing that it gets done - and so some of it just doesn't get done. The NEW queue used to get backed up all the time for exactly this reason. The problem went away when one person became responsible for processing it. Replacing teams with individuals usually works better, where it's actually possible. When it isn't, you probably need to break up the task more until it is. We would all be much worse off with the abolition of individual responsibility. If I were feeling in a conspiracy-theorist mood then I'd suggest that those who are promoting team maintainance are trying to gain power while evading responsibility. But frankly I think that's giving them too much credit. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Thoughts on Debian quality, including automated testing
On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 11:17:43PM +0100, Thomas Hood wrote: > If the problem is lack of motivation, > and the chief motivator is a sense of responsibility, then you don't want > to diffuse that. Specifically motivation to do *this* task, rather than any of the others in the pile that need doing. People who maintain significant packages tend to be busy. Their reason for doing one thing over another will be primarily dependent on what they want to do, and what they feel they *should* do. > > We would all be much worse off with the abolition of individual > > responsibility. > > The constitution already abolished it -- at least, if you interpret > article 2.1 the way some people have. I consider 'individual responsibility' to be a matter of personal ethics, not enforced punishment. We do have a few morally bankrupt maintainers (or, non-maintainers). I think the majority of developers have some sense of responsibility, though. This belief is primarily founded on the fact that I don't think Debian could have survived this long at this size without it. > Maybe it would be useful to reinforce a sense of responsibility in Debian. You can't reinforce or enforce ethics - attempting to do so merely gives you obedience, or a herd mentality. And I don't think that a blame culture will accomplish anything. On the other hand, I think there might be some benefit to requiring that the Maintainer field must always denote one single Debian developer, who would be the "buck stops here" guy for that package. Not an applicant, not a mailing list, and not a group of people. I believe the tools have now advanced to the point where this is a practical option. In general you're always far better off forcing every *change* to a given component to go through a single individual. Large projects need a pumpking, because dogpiling creates lousy software. For Debian this would be cumbersome and unwieldy as a rule, but some high-importance tasks could benefit from it. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Thoughts on Debian quality, including automated testing
On Thu, Dec 22, 2005 at 10:43:34AM +0100, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > On Thu, 2005-12-22 at 08:38 +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On the other hand, I think there might be some benefit to requiring > > that the Maintainer field must always denote one single Debian > > developer, who would be the "buck stops here" guy for that > > package. Not an applicant, not a mailing list, and not a group of > > people. > > This "not an applicant" thing is a bad idea. As you might know, the > NM-process is designed around the idea that someone has to prove they're > up to the task they want to do. That's why for packagers it's required > to have packaging activitity. Disallowing them to have the final > responsibility over a package disables you to evaluate whether they're > actually fit for this responsibility. Actually it doesn't, you could work it out something like this: The maintainer is a developer who is ultimately responsible for the package. The applicant does most of the work. One of the primary criteria for judging the applicant would be how much work the maintainer has to do - the question put to them would be of the form "Would you be comfortable with handing this package over to this person, after watching them work for N weeks?". The issues with the current system are that we end up with a lot of packages being non-maintained by failing applicants, and we get a lot of useless packages added to the archive just because an applicant needed to find something of their own. This scheme should fix the former and reduce the latter. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Thoughts on Debian quality, including automated testing
On Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 02:31:19PM -0500, Benjamin Seidenberg wrote: > Andrew Suffield wrote: > > >On the other hand, I think there might be some benefit to requiring > >that the Maintainer field must always denote one single Debian > >developer, who would be the "buck stops here" guy for that > >package. Not an applicant, not a mailing list, and not a group of > >people. I believe the tools have now advanced to the point where this > >is a practical option. > > > >In general you're always far better off forcing every *change* to a > >given component to go through a single individual. Large projects need > >a pumpking, because dogpiling creates lousy software. For Debian this > >would be cumbersome and unwieldy as a rule, but some high-importance > >tasks could benefit from it. > > > > I think you have something here, but I think allowing an > applicant/mailing list in maintainer should be ok. > In the case of an applicant, if they're doine the work, they > both > deserve the credit I don't think we should be using the control file for this purpose. Particularly since it does not and never has included a list of the people who do most of the work on a given package. Consider samba - the 'maintainer' hasn't been heard from in ages, and nowhere in the control file are all the relevant people listed. The obvious place for this information would be the changelog - this is the current convention (again, see samba). > and should be the one to get all the messages that > the various debian infrastructures sends out (Archive scripts, BTS, > point of contact for security, etc). I *think* that the relevant infrastructure tools have now all been fixed so that you don't have to use the Maintainer field to accomplish this. > Instead, why not propose a Responsible-For: header for control that > lists a person inside the project who the buck stops with in the case of > an applicant or team maintained package? Because I don't see how it would be semantically different to the Maintainer field. The distinction between them is not apparent (what is Maintainer supposed to mean under this scheme?). And adding new fields is more work, so you don't do it without a good reason. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: stable aliases for CD drives
On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 05:55:03PM +0100, Adrian von Bidder wrote: > On Thursday 29 December 2005 14.45, Finn-Arne Johansen wrote: > > > Would it not be enough for apt if d-i created an fstab that linked > > /dev/hdX -> /media/cdrom ? > > Won't work because the problem at hand is exactly that /dev/hdX won't > necessarily be stable anymore. > > (and, once more, and much worse: network interfaces need a solution to the > same problem...) nameif, ifrename - really, this problem has been solved so many times that it's just not funny any more. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: APT public key updates?
On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 07:38:37PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > In the third case, again the compromise is either detected, or it isn't. If > it's detected, we're revoking the key again; if it's *not* detected (and it > seems to me that anyone able to compromise the pgp key without also having > to compromise ftp-master is likely good enough to go undetected), then this > is a case where scheduled key rotations help us. There's also a secondary case where they help. Any PGP key can be cracked with sufficient outlay of computing power. Scheduled key rotations mean that this has a minimum *cost* requirement associated; it prevents mere time from being sufficient. If you work out the numbers carefully then you can effectively stop this attack for everybody who isn't rich enough to just hire away all the critical people and take control that way. Of course, the other requirement for this to work is that the new key not be generated until shortly before the old one is ready to expire. However, we don't have to do this annually; with a 2048-bit key, replacing every five years and generating the new key one year before the old one expires should be safe at present. That's a conservative estimate. To defend against ancillary attacks (like somebody grabbing a copy of the key from ftp-master) you need to know how probable they are, and reduce these figures accordingly. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Need for launchpad
On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 03:19:42PM -0500, Frans Jessop wrote: > Ubuntu's launchpad is amazing. Do you think it would be helpful if all > DD's worked through it on their projects? Wouldn't that keep things more > organized and efficient? Or perhaps Debian could build its own version of > launchpad which is better. Again, I think it would do a good job keeping > everything organized an efficient. The day when working on Debian requires the use of a web interface will be the day that I hunt down and painfully kill the person responsible for doing it. Removing the ability to manage things from the shell would not be more organised and efficient unless you're a complete fricking moron who can't operate a unix host. Which appears to be the target audience of launchpad. We're working with the real stuff here, not kids toys. Web interfaces don't scale to the level at which we have to work *all the time*. Just ask the BTS admins what happens when somebody scans http://bugs.debian.org/ to collect data. Oh, and hey - when SuSE are doing better than you at publishing the tools they use, it's a hint that maybe you suck. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Powerfulness (was: tioga : a powerful plotting system in ruby)
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 03:28:27PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: > On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 23:52 +0100, Juergen Salk wrote: > > > I am just wondering if we shouldn't be more chary of using > > meaningless (or soliciting) phrases like "powerful" in > > package descriptions in general. > > Sounds like something that should be added to lintian. Too hard, too many combinations, too much investigation needed to pin it down. For example, there's over 150 packages using the word 'best' - I can't imagine that could possibly be right, but you never know without reading the thing... -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Need for launchpad
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 07:49:33PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 09:02:09AM +0100, Stephan Hermann wrote: > > On Sunday 08 January 2006 07:27, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 03:19:42PM -0500, Frans Jessop wrote: > > > > Ubuntu's launchpad is amazing. Do you think it would be helpful if all > > > > DD's worked through it on their projects? Wouldn't that keep things > > > > more > > > > organized and efficient? Or perhaps Debian could build its own version > > > > of launchpad which is better. Again, I think it would do a good job > > > > keeping everything organized an efficient. > > > > > > The day when working on Debian requires the use of a web interface > > > will be the day that I hunt down and painfully kill the person > > > responsible for doing it. > > > > Luckily that the bts of Launchpad has a mailinterface..which is quite nice. > > So some other parts will have mailinterfaces as well, and some other > > goodies > > where someone can attach some nice cli tools. > > Which nobody except the Blessed Few (being those who have signed the NDA > allowing them access to the Launchpad code) can modify or enhance. And even then have uncertain chances of getting it deployed into a place where it's useful, and goodness knows how practical it would be to do this anyway - the backend limitations could be anything. You can't normally design real APIs onto production software and get anything but a mess, you have to engage in sound engineering from the start. > > > Removing the ability to manage things from the shell would not be more > > > organised and efficient unless you're a complete fricking moron who > > > can't operate a unix host. Which appears to be the target audience of > > > launchpad. > > > > Well, I'm happy to see, that a lot of people are not thinking like you. > > They > > see launchpad as a collaborative worktool. > > Your comment doesn't follow from what Andrew said. Indeed, it appears to demonstrate a complete absence of having understood the paragraph it is in reply to, or perhaps even having read it. > > Finally, are you not able to use lynx? > > I know your smarter than that. Pressing the down-arrow 50 times to reach an > action button takes a lot longer than typing a quick command to invoke that > same action, and we both know it. And more to the point, is almost completely immune to scripting. Which is the ultimate problem with most of these things. I don't think Debian would even be here today if random people couldn't throw together stuff they wanted to see done on top of the stuff we already have; that's how most of our current infrastructure was created. Unix tools should do one thing well and let another tool do the next thing. That's how we've come this far. It's also a statement of some elementary engineering principles. It always amazes me how eager people are to abandon these concepts in favour of some grand integrated white elephant that's all CSS and no trousers. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Need for launchpad
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 10:27:07AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > On Sun, 8 Jan 2006 12:20:52 +0100, Torsten Landschoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > said: > > > OTOH I'd like to have Debian move to using a single SCM and storing > > all packages in repositories. Currently you need to know Subversion, > > CVS and tla if you want to be sure you can directly work with the > > Debian sources. Our tools could also be better integrated. Source > > packages use umpteen different patch systems etc. which should be > > done away with. > > > It would be nice to change this but I don't have the time and > > motivation to even try it. Perhaps you do? > > And hey, if you can do all that, can you also solve th psky > little problem of global hunger? And get rid of vi while you are > doing so? And the SARS thing, and avian flu, and all that? And I want a pony. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Need for launchpad
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:44:57AM +0100, Stephan Hermann wrote: > On Sunday 08 January 2006 10:39, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 07:49:33PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: > > > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 09:02:09AM +0100, Stephan Hermann wrote: > > > > On Sunday 08 January 2006 07:27, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > > > On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 03:19:42PM -0500, Frans Jessop wrote: > > > > > > Ubuntu's launchpad is amazing. Do you think it would be helpful if > > > > > > all DD's worked through it on their projects? Wouldn't that keep > > > > > > things more organized and efficient? Or perhaps Debian could build > > > > > > its own version of launchpad which is better. Again, I think it > > > > > > would do a good job keeping everything organized an efficient. > > > > > > > > > > The day when working on Debian requires the use of a web interface > > > > > will be the day that I hunt down and painfully kill the person > > > > > responsible for doing it. > > > > > > > > Luckily that the bts of Launchpad has a mailinterface..which is quite > > > > nice. So some other parts will have mailinterfaces as well, and some > > > > other goodies where someone can attach some nice cli tools. > > > > > > Which nobody except the Blessed Few (being those who have signed the NDA > > > allowing them access to the Launchpad code) can modify or enhance. > > > > And even then have uncertain chances of getting it deployed into a > > place where it's useful, and goodness knows how practical it would be > > to do this anyway - the backend limitations could be anything. > > Sure, but this applies to any software, actually the best example is the > kernel. No it doesn't. I can change the kernel and eliminate any backend limitations that offend me. I cannot do so with some external web service. I can apply any changes I want to the kernel. I cannot apply any changes to some web service, I can only beg the owners to do it if they feel like it. These problems are the very ones which free software *solves*. They're a big part of the reason why most of us are here. > Therefore, a lot of people never learned the advantages of cli, and more > people don't want to learn them. Why? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. > But, even those people we have to reach with an easy to use interface, and if > this means: webapplications, so be it. It doesn't mean, that I or you have to > use it The point which you are arguing in favour of is that I be forced to use it. Otherwise you don't appear to *have* a point, since that's what we're talking about. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Need for launchpad
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:25:28AM +0100, Stephan Hermann wrote: > > I know your smarter than that. Pressing the down-arrow 50 times to reach > > an action button takes a lot longer than typing a quick command to invoke > > that same action, and we both know it. Please don't throw bogus solutions > > around like that, it only encourages him. > > Hehe...well, it's a matter of working behaviour. I never said, that working > from the CLI is not faster or more productive sometimes. What I'm trying to > say is, that this "arrogant elite thinking" must go away. As far as I can see, you are the only person who has brought such thinking to this thread. The rest of us are objecting to your claims that we should be forced to work in the manner used by the most incompetent user you can find. I don't think anybody here (other than you) actually cares what method such users use, so long as it does not affect us. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Need for launchpad
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:30:20AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > ,[ https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/HCT ] > | 1.13. Will the source package import code be open source? > | > | Not at this time. > ` > > Hmm. Not a strong commitment to the open source philosophy or > anything like our social contract. So, can one trust any company like > this to retain the service as librè service in the long run? Or only > until enough people are hooked in? Can anybody actually think of a reason why they might want to keep any of this code proprietary, other than grabbing power? I can't see *any* way in which this could possibly be anything else. The only reason I can think of is to be able to use launchpad to control people, for whatever reason. That would be pretty much the antithesis to us. It's everything we've been opposed to all these years. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Canonical's business model
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 10:30:07PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > They're investing in writing better tools, and they're keeping them > private so as to maintain a competative advantage with them over Red Hat, > SuSE, Fedora, and so forth. Including Debian, for that matter. ...damnit, I never thought of that. And you know why not? Because on some level I thought that all the noise they make about 'contributing back to Debian' was more than just lip service. I had (stupidly) wanted to believe that it wasn't *just* their PR machine at work. If you're right, then it would mean that their concept of 'contributing back' means to purchase 'goodwill' at the lowest available price - which would be consistent with the behaviour we've seen from them so far. In effect, treating it as another asset, and behaving like a classical company that focusses on the bottom line. So that's actually plausible. I don't know about other people, but personally I do not appreciate being treated as a tradeable asset. And I am reminded of a passage from Pratchett's /Carpe Jugulum/: Mightily Oats: "There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example." Granny Weatherwax: "And what do they think? Against it, are they?" Mightily Oats: "It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey." Granny Weatherwax: "Nope." Mightily Oats: "Pardon?" Granny Weatherwax: "There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is." Mightily Oats: "It's a lot more complicated than that--" Granny Weatherwax: "No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts." Mightily Oats: "Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--" Granny Weatherwax: "But they starts with thinking about people as things" -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Need for launchpad
On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 08:45:02AM +0100, Romain Francoise wrote: > Matt Zimmerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Developers will choose to use them when and where it makes sense for > > them to do so. > > Ironically enough, it looks like all Debian Developers already have an > account there... because I have one, and I never ask for one: > > https://launchpad.net/people/rfrancoise> > > Automatic import of the Debian LDAP data? > > https://launchpad.net/people/asuffield> > https://launchpad.net/people/srivasta> > etc... I shall upload some of Manoj's pornography immediately. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Packet radio and foul language
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 01:13:06AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 19:13 -0800, Don Armstrong wrote: > > On Mon, 09 Jan 2006, Benjamin Seidenberg wrote: > > > Miles Bader wrote: > [snip] > > > > I, for one, am far more interested in the message than the way which > > the message is conveyed. > > The way the message is conveyed *is* part of the message. Yes. When somebody puts on a smart suit and tells you, in 'polite' and clipped tones, that everything you believe in is wrong and that you should instead do things *his* way, then you know that not only is he a self-obsessed bigot, he's dishonest about it too, and furthermore that he thinks you're stupid enough to believe that he's being nice to you. At least if he didn't *pretend* to be polite then there would be a certain amount of integrity in his actions, and probably less actual insult. Dishonesty is *not* an equivalent substitute for respect. If you're being nice to somebody even though you don't like them, that doesn't make you a better person, it just makes you a liar. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Canonical's business model
[Most of the replies from people appear to have completely missed the point, but I'll just pick up on this one because it's not so far off...] On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 11:52:43AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > It's also important to not completely conflate the people who work for > Canonical with the actions of Canonical the company. The primary thing I object to is that the ones doing the conflating are Canonical themselves. They're forever talking about how great they are for "giving back to Debian", and all their wonderful "committments". > Many people who work > for companies contribute to free software as part of their job, as a > hobby, or in that grey area of their days that's partly work and partly > their own time. Many of free software's most valuable contributors have > done this. Which means that the distinction between Canonical and any other company is pretty much nothing - except for their continual, offensive PR effort claiming otherwise. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Canonical's business model
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 12:22:03AM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > I don't[sic] the same rant over others Debian related companies Have you ever actually subscribed to any Debian mailing lists? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Packet radio and foul language
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 12:43:16PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > Manners/politeness is social lubricant. It makes society run > smoother and less violently. I'm pretty sure that people who always take the path of least resistance are *precisely* how the world got so fucked up in the first place. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Canonical's business model
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:44:28PM +0100, jeremiah foster wrote: > On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 10:25 +0100, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote: > > > Thomas Bushnell writes: > > > > > No, I think it's because Ubuntu doesn't cooperate well with Debian, > > > while pretending to cooperate. > > > Could you be more explicit? I know there has been concern about Ubuntu > amongst debian developers, and that Mark Shuttleworth has some doubts > about working with DCC, although he is rather vague in my opinion. But > what are the problems with Ubuntu? Is it an unecessary fork? Or is it > not contributing back its changes to debian software? I think it's the pretending that pisses people off. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Canonical's business model
On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 11:07:43AM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > On 1/10/06, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 12:22:03AM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > > > I don't[sic] the same rant over others Debian related companies > > > > Have you ever actually subscribed to any Debian mailing lists? > > > > Don't be fooled by From mail headers. Well, I've sure seen similar things being said about nearly every Debian-related company I've ever heard of (Progeny, Linspire, Nexenta, etc). I find it hard to see how else you could have missed them. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Packet radio and foul language
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 09:49:25AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 15:41 +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 12:43:16PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > > > Manners/politeness is social lubricant. It makes society run > > > smoother and less violently. > > > > I'm pretty sure that people who always take the path of least > > resistance are *precisely* how the world got so fucked up in the first > > place. > > "Being polite" and "standing up for your beliefs" are not mutually > exclusive. That would depend on your beliefs. 'Honesty', for example. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Canonical's business model
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:56:35PM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > On 1/11/06, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 11:07:43AM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > > > On 1/10/06, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 12:22:03AM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > > > > > I don't[sic] the same rant over others Debian related companies > > > > > > > > Have you ever actually subscribed to any Debian mailing lists? > > > > > > > > > > Don't be fooled by From mail headers. > > > > Well, I've sure seen similar things being said about nearly every > > Debian-related company I've ever heard of (Progeny, Linspire, Nexenta, > > etc). I find it hard to see how else you could have missed them. > > I agree with "similar things being said" but i'm yet to hear about the > lack of collaboration and give Debian something back. None of the other companies ran around pronouncing how great they were at 'giving things back' and how 'committed' they were to free software, etcetera. That appears to be the relevant point. I don't think anybody seriously objects to the existence of companies who *don't* do these things. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Canonical's business model
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 03:25:01PM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > On 1/11/06, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 02:56:35PM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > > > On 1/11/06, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 11:07:43AM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > > > > > On 1/10/06, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 12:22:03AM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > > > > > > > I don't[sic] the same rant over others Debian related companies > > > > > > > > > > > > Have you ever actually subscribed to any Debian mailing lists? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Don't be fooled by From mail headers. > > > > > > > > Well, I've sure seen similar things being said about nearly every > > > > Debian-related company I've ever heard of (Progeny, Linspire, Nexenta, > > > > etc). I find it hard to see how else you could have missed them. > > > > > > I agree with "similar things being said" but i'm yet to hear about the > > > lack of collaboration and give Debian something back. > > > > None of the other companies ran around pronouncing how great they were > > at 'giving things back' and how 'committed' they were to free > > software, etcetera. That appears to be the relevant point. > > > > I don't think anybody seriously objects to the existence of companies > > who *don't* do these things. > > Are you saying that they're spending more money with PR than really > contributing back ? I don't know about money, but I'm pretty sure their claims exceed their actions. I think that a sufficient response is to point this out whenever people start worshipping Canonical in public. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Dissection of an Ubuntu PR message
Let's take this one apart and see what it is that pisses people off so much. On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 09:57:35AM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: > There are still rather intense emotional responses to Ubuntu within the > Debian community, as evidenced in this thread and others. First a dismissal of dissenters as 'emotional' (deliberate flame, thinly veiled so as to pay lip service to their 'code of conduct'). > However, there > seems to be a trend toward more effective collaboration at the individual > level, as many Debian maintainers now recognize that Ubuntu developers are, > by and large, standing by and willing to work with them, and that such > collaboration requires active participation from both sides. This is a statement that "some people who work for Ubuntu also work on Debian, or assist people who are working on Debian", which is what we'd expect of any company that employs people interested in Debian - not much of a claim really. It also takes the opportunity to blame the Debian maintainers for failing to cooperate with Ubuntu ones, in those cases where such 'collaboration' does not occur. > In comparison with other Debian derivatives, past and present, the fact that > this kind of discussion has been happening at all, with both parties > involved, is a significant step forward. And this is just insulting Progeny (and the rest) while promoting the superiority of Ubuntu. It's also wrong. I don't think it's any real surprise that people dislike this sort of behaviour. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Dissection of an Ubuntu PR message
On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 03:41:16PM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: > On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 11:09:12PM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > Let's take this one apart and see what it is that pisses people off so > > much. > > I don't intend to participate in this type of email argument with you; I've > yet to see it pay off for anyone involved. However, I will be in London > later this month and would be willing to use that opportunity to civilly > discuss your concerns face-to-face. The intent here being "stop people from scrutinising Ubuntu in public; get it off the lists so that it's less visible". Not likely. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Development standards for unstable
On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 03:49:08PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > > >While the package might not be of the quality we strive to achieve within > >Debian; if a bug is not release critical we consider the bug not to be > >serious enough to impact the packages' releaseworthyness. This is by > >definition. Even if there are many of those bugs, they appearently do not > >prevent the core functionality from working. > > Well the definition is given in policy and a policy change (to be discussed) > might change the definition of release critical. So if we define that > numbers N_n normal bugs and N_i important bugs and time spans T_n and > T_i where a bug is completely unattended by the maintainer (e.i. no > comments, no reason why not fixed, etc.) we can define a measure > > X = Sum(N_n * T_n) + 2 * Sum(N_i * T_i) > > and if this measure excedes a certain limit we define this as RC > critical. Well it's nice in theory. The problem is that you have to set the threshold high enough to exempt glibc and dpkg, and when you do that, I have not yet found a metric that complains about any other packages (I've tried two or three times to invent one). Sure, you could just manually exclude those few big offenders, but if you're going to do that then what's the point? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Dissection of an Ubuntu PR message
On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 05:31:40PM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > On 1/12/06, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 03:41:16PM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: > > > On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 11:09:12PM +, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > > Let's take this one apart and see what it is that pisses people off so > > > > much. > > > > > > I don't intend to participate in this type of email argument with you; > > > I've > > > yet to see it pay off for anyone involved. However, I will be in London > > > later this month and would be willing to use that opportunity to civilly > > > discuss your concerns face-to-face. > > > > The intent here being "stop people from scrutinising Ubuntu in public; > > get it off the lists so that it's less visible". Not likely. > > Do you want visibility or solve current problems ? If I were interested in solving Ubuntu's problems then I would be working on Ubuntu. As people keep pointing out, Ubuntu's failure to cooperate effectively is *not* our problem - the only 'problem' that *we* have is that Ubuntu-worshippers keep showing up and proselytizing. An effective solution to this problem is to raise awareness to the point where people stop believing and start thinking. It appears to be working. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Dissection of an Ubuntu PR message
On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 06:08:52PM -0200, Gustavo Franco wrote: > We can't decide how they need to "give us something MORE back" and > it's their problem? Whoever said they need to do that? They just need to stop bragging about shit they don't do. There's at least two ways to accomplish this. If they fail to contribute in a meaningful way, it just means more work for them (in trying to maintain a diverging fork). Hence, that's their problem. It's not really a problem for us. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Development standards for unstable
On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 09:15:25PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> On the other hand I can not really
> believe that it is impossible to touch glibc and dpkg bugs with some
> kind of status ("I'm working on it", "Help would be welcome in this
> particular task", ...).
I don't think it's impossible, and it would probably be an
improvement. The relevant point is that it isn't happening, and what
are you going to do about it?
If a scheme can only work for unimportant packages, it's probably not
worth the effort of implementing. So I'd say you have to start with
something that gets this part right.
Of course, this is just a reflection of the real problem here -
calibration. Exactly where were you planning to draw the line between
current packages that are well or poorly maintained?
Hell, if you can do *that*, there's ways to derive the metric in an
automated fashion.
--
.''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
: :' : http://www.debian.org/ |
`. `' |
`- -><- |
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
Re: Development standards for unstable
On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 03:11:58PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: > Andrew Suffield wrote: > > Well it's nice in theory. The problem is that you have to set the > > threshold high enough to exempt glibc and dpkg, and when you do that, > > I have not yet found a metric that complains about any other packages > > (I've tried two or three times to invent one). > > I think the problem might be that the formula doesn't take the package's > installed base and/or age into account. The number of bugs in the BTS > tends to increase as both values increase without much connection to > the actual number of bugs in the package that affect many users, since > people eventually hit most of the edge cases, and those sort of bugs are > often the least likely to get fixed. It might help, if there was only a good way to sample this information. popcon is pretty dubious, and I've got no idea offhand for a good way of detecting the age of a package (particularly when you consider package renames and changelog rotation and such). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 10:27:31PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 01:26:25AM +0100, Bill Allombert wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 11:35:24PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > > > I believe Ubuntu fills an important gap in the Debian world and as such > > > Ubuntu is not part of the Debian world, because it does not share the > > values that found Debian. > > That's kind of a strange position to take, isn't it? Does this mean that > the many users who use Debian directly sheerly on technical excellence > alone, without sharing Debian's "founding values", are not part of the > "Debian world"? For that matter, I don't know of any derivative Debian > distributions that require their developers to agree to the social contract; > so by that standard, are *any* of them part of the "Debian world"? Intuitively, I would not expect any standard to classify any of the current derivatives as 'part of the Debian world'. We have very little interaction with any of them. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 09:57:15AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > On Sat, 14 Jan 2006, Bill Allombert wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 11:35:24PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > > > I believe Ubuntu fills an important gap in the Debian world and as such > > > > Ubuntu is not part of the Debian world, > > That's simply wrong given the many people who use both and who cares about > both. By this reasoning, Windows is 'part of the Debian world'. I hope you didn't expect anybody to take it seriously. > You're only one inside Debian and you can't generalize your personal > opinion on the whole project. That's an amusing attitude for somebody who just did exactly that in the previous sentence. > Sorry, you missed my point. I do not direct our users/developers to > another distribution, I call for better cooperation so that WE can fill the > gap by taking part of their work. Did you really just say "we should cooperate better so that we can do Ubuntu's work for them"? The arrogance of such a statement is only surpassed by its inanity. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [ad-hominem construct deleted]
If you can't understand sarcasm, why didn't you read the part for people who can't understand sarcasm? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 05:55:14PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > On Sat, 14 Jan 2006, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > > That's simply wrong given the many people who use both and who cares about > > > both. > > > > By this reasoning, Windows is 'part of the Debian world'. I hope you > > didn't expect anybody to take it seriously. > > Ok, not well worded, let me rephrase it. It's wrong given the many > exchanges that we have between the two communities. If the Ubuntu/Debian > community didn't overlap so much (and if we were in two different world), > we certainly wouldn't have so many discussions about Ubuntu. The fact that we spent more time talking about both Nexenta and Gentoo shows this one to be either false or uninteresting, depending on how you interpret it. > (and no I don't plan to respond to the rest of your troll) That's okay, I skipped responding to most of your troll too. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [ad-hominem construct deleted]
On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 06:20:40PM +0200, Sami Haahtinen wrote: > Andrew Suffield wrote: > > If you can't understand sarcasm, why didn't you read the part for > > people who can't understand sarcasm? > > I read the part about sarcasm and i partially argee with you. But i'm > with Andreas here. Your post didn't help anyone, the original Ubuntu > post was important to quite a few people. Windows security advisories are surely important to quite a few people, and probably to more readers of -devel-announce than Ubuntu stuff. Are you saying that it would be okay to post these? If not, then you need to rethink your reasoning here. Personally, I don't think "important to the subscribers" is the correct measure. > I can understand that a part of the people behind Debian feel hostile > against Ubuntu because it's succeeding in something that Debian was > trying to achieve. But what i can't understand is that people behind > Ubuntu are trying to reach out and build a bridge between the people in > Debian and some people are intentionally trying to burn them. They are > really investing time on the co-operation, they are creating tools to > help this. What are the Debian people doing, they are bitching about > Ubuntu people not putting their backs in to it. I considered editing this out, but I'm quoting it instead because it's a neat bit of libel[0] in an attempt to change the subject. This is not about Ubuntu at all - it could have been *anybody*'s press release being reposted. This is about appropriate use of Debian mailing lists. [0] I don't know who made this shit up, but as far as I'm aware it's purely fictional. We're objecting to Ubuntu's *PR*, and they're complaining that we're trying to stop collaberation? WTF? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: For those who care about lesbians
On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 05:51:03PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: > >> If you still can't take the hint, I'll be more blunt: this isn't the > >> first crass stunt you've pulled by any means, and you are now right at > >> the limits of many peoples tolerance. Pull another one again, I may > >> be forced to file a request for your expulsion. That might happen for > >> this one yet. > > > > If your message is merely a troll, I would respectfully ask you > > please to expell yourself. > > I was perfectly serious. This is merely the latest in a number of > things Mr Suffield has done which are detrimental to the project in a > number of ways. Some of these are not a matter of public record, so > you would be unaware of them. I hope you realise that if I were the litigious type, you would be receiving a court summons in the next day or two (it's lies, btw, for those of you watching - I hope nobody bought that 'secret offenses' noise, it's like the PATRIOT act or something). Consider yourself fortunate that I am not so inclined, and be *very* careful about what you say in the future; other UK residents may not be so generous. Of course, if I find you causing me actual monetary damage in some way, I might change my mind. [There's considerable case law for this with email. "An untrue statement of fact which damages the reputation of a person (or a company) or holds him, her or it up to hatred, ridicule or contempt is libellous" is one of the common phrasings of the test, and email authors are held to the same standard as journalists. There is no "freedom of speech" principle in UK law; you can express opinions, but that's all. You may not make false *or* *unprovable* statements of fact with intent to harm.] And if you start mud-flinging in earnest, I don't think I would be the first one to be expelled from the project. I have no interest in you, but you really do not want to force my hand on this - I haven't done anything wrong other than holding opinions you don't agree with, and you certainly can't put any evidence behind that 'detrimental to the project' claim, but *you* are pursuing a personal vendetta. Again. Oh, and that would be 'incitement to cause harm', which is a criminal offense these days. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: For those who care about lesbians
On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 11:03:37PM +, Brett Parker wrote: > Of course, the post to d-d-a about lesbians that then goes on state > """ > Don't post irrelevant stuff here. It would be a real shame if the list > had to be moderated because people can't exercise good judgement. > """ > > Seems to me that you really hadn't thought about what you were posting, > or where. That was not an appropriate place for the post, and you should > know better. It looks to me rather like you missed the point of that mail, despite quoting it. What did you think the point was? Alternatively, what do you think is the correct mailing list for contacting (all of) the developers about appropriate use of d-d-a? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
