[Mageia-dev] About panotools patent problem (and other problematic rpms)

[Ahmad Samir]

On 22 February 2011 20:09, andre999 <andr55 at laposte.net> wrote:
>
> <aside>
> First of all, "tainted" in English implies that the software doesn't work.
>  (Unless it refers to food, in which case it means "poisonous".)
> So we should choose a more appropriate name, such as "constrained", or use
> the Ubuntu approach and use a name which doesn't literally describe the
> contents. ("Multiverse", in their case.)
> Anything but something that implies that there is something inherently wrong
> with the package in question.
> That was one advantage of "plf", but of course that is already taken. And it
> is certainly advantageous to include such packages directly on Mageia
> mirrors.
> </aside>
>
> A Cleaner approach -- albeit more work -- would be for the "constrained"
> package to be an external module which adds the missing functionality. For
> less modular packages, this would be replacing (only) the files which
> provide the questioned functionality.
> For a typical a music player-type application, this would be only a be a few
> relatively small files.
>
> So a user that wants to add the "contrained" functionality would simply add
> an extra package, which obviously would have a different name based on the
> main package.
> (It would be useful to suggest adding such packages during installation, if
> the "contrained" repositories are selected.)
> (That is, if such a related package is available in selected repos.)
>
> Think of the gstreamer packages -- the "ugly" perhaps corresponding to the
> "constrained" packages being considered.
>
> my 2 cents :)
> --
> André
>

Just a small note, if you didn't like the colour of the bike shed you
should have discussed the point before it was built, painted, the
paint has dried and is about to have new residents.

And if you discussed the issue and your POV wasn't adapted, what's the
point re-emerging it now given that changing the new isn't easy now
that the infra- is already in place.

I like the name tainted, (note that the kernel does use the word
tainted to indicate there's a non-open source binary blob/driver e.g.
with the nvidia proprietary driver, so this usage is not unheard of).
:)

-- 
Ahmad Samir