11 Jun
2009
11 Jun
'09
5:47 a.m.
DEBIAN PROJECT KNOWS BEST. YOU WILL NOT QUESTION DEBIAN PROJECT!
My favorite so far is how Debian Project disables encryption in a
certain RADIUS package because Debian Project disagrees with the
license of the encryption library the programmer used. You have to go
out of your way to build a local version and NOT have Debian overwrite
your local version with their lobotomized version on every upgrade. If
you ask about this you are informed that you should pick another RADIUS
package because the programmer is "an asshole" who "won't
compromise"
over a "simple change".
The stupid part is that the part that Debian thinks they should be
exempt from is a provision of the crypto library requiring the
programmer to acknowledge use of the library in promotional materials,
which they say is against the GPL. (After all, you should be working
for THE COMMUNITY and not looking for personal credit for your work!)
There's also the stupid new provision in the installer that you MUST
create a local non-root user to install the system. But Debian Project,
what if I use LDAP and Kerberos to provide users on my system? The
answer is "You aren't supposed to do that!" The workaround is to
install the system without a root password.
DEBIAN PROJECT KNOWS BEST. YOU WILL NOT QUESTION DEBIAN PROJECT!
(But isn't this the same kind of behavior I was bitching about coming
from Redmond back in the NT4 days?)
On Jun 10, 2009, at 4:56 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
On Wed, 2009-06-10 at 14:16 -0700, Zane H. Healy
wrote:
Something else that irritates me is that Linux
programmers seem to be
just
as bad about writing non-portable code as Windows programmers.
One of the problems I ran into with a couple of packages I wrote was
Debian "maintainers" buggering about with stuff to get it to compile on
all supported platforms and not passing changes back to me.
I wouldn't have minded so much, but the software was *specifically*
only
intended for use on a PC or (at a pinch) a Mac with a serious audio
card.
Why they were bitching about it being able to compile on S390 or
MIPSEL,
I really don't know. It hasn't a hope in hell of being useful on
anything other than a PC.
Gordon