On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 05:02:28PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote: > On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 03:54:27PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > > > As an Alpha user, the quality of a package on i386 is completely > > > irrelevant. > > > > Stop trolling, sure i understand about porting, but this is so wrong. If > > fixes got in the package, not the i386 package, but the source package, > > then you can build the fixed version. > > Ehm, the main point of the 'keep non-free' camp seems to be user > convinience. Surely 'compile it yourself' doesn't fall in this category?
Ah, but you forgot maintainer convenience. Remember, what is the moto of the free/open/whatever software people : if nobody except you cares, you just have become the default maintainer of said project. So if a package is badly maintained (or badly maintained on a subgroup of arches) and you don't care enough to make the effort to fix it, then it is reasonable to either remove the package and forget it, or simply have it unsupported on the arch it is not well maintained. And sorry, but building a package yourself is orders of magnitude easier than doing the full packaging first time, especially for novices. Especially if there is still a maintainer which supports other arches than yours and can help you out. Friendly, Sven Luther
