Source packages appropriate by default?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Monday, May 20, 2013 06:16:53 PM Benjamin Drung wrote:
> Am Montag, den 20.05.2013, 23:09 +0800 schrieb Daniel J Blueman:
> > When installing Ubuntu, I always see the source packages enabled by
> > default.
> > 
> > For all the general users I install Ubuntu for (including servers),
> > it's an utter waste of bandwidth for everyone, particularly when
> > automatically checking once a day. This is amplified eg in schools
> > without transparent webcaches etc.
> > 
> > Anyone get the same feeling that we should have source packages an opt-in?
> 
> I agree that we should disable the apt-src entries by default. It's easy
> to enable the apt-src entries for a developer.
> 
> What happens when you run "apt-get source" with disabled apt-src
> entries?

Apt will error out that it can't find the package.

I think that if we are distributing binaries, we should (perhaps must, I'm not 
sure) enable the source repositories in order to , as a free software 
distribution, provide the source that goes with the binaries we distribute.

Scott K