[argyllcms] Re: Argyllcms 1.0.1 packaged in fedora-devel
- From: Ben Goren <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:14:21 -0700
On 2008 Jul 27, at 11:47 AM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> I think you should have more respect for people who have
> maintained thousands of apps for more a decade and know very
> well what makes them waste their time or not.
>
> Graeme's solution does not scale. It's as simple as that.
This is truly veering off topic, but I would merely suggest that
our differences lie in the notion that thousands of apps needs to
be maintained by anybody but their authors. ``Packaging'' should
be no more than a Web page (etc.) with links to the binaries (and
seperately to the source).
When those package maintainers started maintaining packages more
than a decade ago, resources were terribly limited. And they came
up with crude hacks that worked, much the same way that the
computers of more than a decade before that required even cruder
hacks to work with a fraction of a megabyte of RAM.
But today, all that should be necessary is something as simple as
``put your entire binary distribution in a single folder; have a
subfolder in that called `bin' that will get added to the $PATH;
and use these other special files and folders if you want niceties
such as a custom icon and global searching of documentation.'' One
of those niceties can even be a cryptographically-signed mechanism
to identify that a new version is available, thus reducing the
role of ``maintainers'' to publishing a list of links to software
they recommend / certify / whatever.
But, as you write, the maintainers have over a decade invested in
byte-pinching and tight central control mechanisms, and are loathe
to change their ways. Quite curious from a group as ostensibly
devoted to free-spirited cooperative anarchy as the open-source
movement.
Cheers,
b&
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