second MOTU meeting summary

[Martin Pitt]

Hi!

(Sorry for breaking the thread, small accident here).

> - during the discussion the point came up that its planned to import
> most of the apt-get.org repositorys into universe, which makes the
> designed QA process that MOTU worked out during the last weeks kind of
> pointless, we will have to rework this one completely.
>

Of course the MOTUs have the freedom to decide this on their own, but
still I cannot hold back my opinion about this. I already talked to
Daniel at the phone (he seems to wholeheartedly agree), but for the
records, here are my key points:

IMHO importing apt-get.org *without any serious QA* is utter crack.
There are too many packages even in the current universe which are
broken enough to throw them out. This shouldn't be aggravated by
putting even more stuff into it which didn't get a proper review
(packaging, FHS, some sort of Debian Policy, functional test, very
basic security review).

I think two handfuls of MOTUs are just not enough to do a bigger job
than > 1000 Debian Developers. 

Offering untested stuff to Ubuntu users won't help them; if too much
stuff breaks for them, they will turn away from using it and blame the
Ubuntu community for this. Of course this is universe and officially
carries the label "unsupported", but personally I still would prefer
not having the label "Ubuntu" on broken software taken from anywhere.

So instead of putting more packages in, I'd suggest to start with
throwing out broken stuff from universe first. It is always easier to
have something that works and extend it step by step by QA-reviewed
software that works rather than sitting on big heap of debs that
nobody actually can rely on since nobody tested them so far. Also,
this constructive apporach is certainly much more fun.

> - with regard to the broken QA process above, we'll get all these
> packages in before release, since their quality will match the
> apt-get.org standards already.

*LOL* apt-get.org standard is not much more than "it looks like a
deb". You cannot expect _anything_ more from it, not even that it is
freely redistributable. So if you really do this, import the stuff
into multiverse please and only put it into universe after you are
sure that it meets the requirements for Free Software.

Please optimize for quality, not for quantity.

And now beat me up.

Thanks,

Martin
-- 
Martin Pitt               http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer    http://www.ubuntulinux.org
Debian Developer         http://www.debian.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/attachments/20050323/0f1a4c07/attachment-0001.pgp