On 06/01/12 11:54, Andre Fischer wrote: > Ah, found another one: > > Synaptic on Ubuntu 11.10 has a package "openoffice.org" which installs > LibreOffice. It is not installed by default (the "libreoffice" package > is) and also provides the 'explanation' > > <quote> > This is a transitional package, replacing the OpenOffice.org packaging > with the LibreOffice packaging. > > It can be safely removed after an upgrade. > </quote> > > but still, is this OK?
hi Andre, this is a standard procedure that happens regularly on deb-based distributions: upstream communities do weird things such as re-brand, fork, become inactive and resume at a different place with a different name, etc.; examples that come to mind include GAIM re-branded to Pidgin, Debian's Mozilla stuff re-branded IceAnimals, or the git/gnuit conflict. the approach is that an empty package with the old name which has a dependency on the real package with the new name is included in the next release, to ensure a smooth upgrade experience for users (because otherwise an outdated and unsupported version of the old package would remain, which is bad from a security point of view). this "transitional" package is then usually dropped one release later (though i don't know what happens exactly on Ubuntu, which supports upgrades between LTS releases). in this case i guess it's at the discretion of the distributions which of the 2 successors of the deceased OpenOffice.org they transition to (and given the lack of a release from Apache OpenOffice it shouldn't surprise anybody that currently LibreOffice is the more popular transition target). regards, michael
