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

[Buchan Milne]

On Tuesday, 22 February 2011 20:09:17 andre999 wrote:
> Maarten Vanraes a écrit :
> > Op vrijdag 18 februari 2011 14:42:02 schreef Michael Scherer:
> >> Le vendredi 18 février 2011 à 12:47 +0000, James Kerr a écrit :
> >>> If there are two packages, one in core and another in tainted, then
> >>> doesn't urpmi need a way to recognise that the tainted package is newer
> >>> than (an update to) the corresponding core package? I believe that this
> >>> is achieved in Mandriva, because plf is greater than mdv.
> >> 
> >> That's abusing release tag and it work by pure chance ( ie, had the plf
> >> decided to  be called the guillomovitch liberation front, it would not
> >> have worked ). And this is quite inflexible, since people will always
> >> have plf packages, leading to users adding some rpm in skip.list with a
> >> regexp.
> >> 
> >> This doesn't make much sense to treat tainted rpm as update to core,
> >> this is not the same notion. But we cannot express this in urpmi for the
> >> moment, as this would requires some way to say "if you need to install
> >> something, prefer this source rather than this one".
> >> 
> >> We can imagine a priority system, or we can simply say that if there is
> >> the same rpm on 2 media, we ask to the user ( except this would requires
> >> IMHO a better system than the current path based one to see what is in a
> >> rpm, but that's a rather long proposal to make ).
> >> 
> >> But you are right this another set of issues to solve for dual life
> >> packages.
> > 
> > after sleeping on this, i've had this idea:
> > 
> > why don't we rename packages in tainted?
> > keeping them in the same name, perhaps has issues with search engines,
> > (ie: which version do you get?)
> > 
> > i proposed renaming packages in tainted,(but not the release tag).
> > 
> > would it be a good compromise if we named packages:
> > 
> > <orig_packagename>-tainted-<version>-<release>  ?
> > 
> > the benefit of this could be adding an Obsoletes and Provides on the
> > original package with the identical version.
> > 
> > for building, i may have this solution:
> > 
> > %tainted(%_optional_feature1 %optional_feature2 %optional_feature3)
> > 
> > this would allow the buildbot to look for %tainted  and if it does, it
> > could rebuild it for tainted and add the particulars itself. this would
> > simplify the whole plf/tainted thing easily. and since all 4 rpms are
> > being built at the same time, you have no srpm problem either.
> > 
> > WDYT?
> 
> <aside>
> First of all, "tainted" in English implies that the software doesn't
> work.

I have never seen that interpretation. Tainted is a synonym for contaminated. 
Contaminated doesn't mean that it doesn't work, it means that you should 
exercise caution in using it (e.g. you may not want to drink it, but you can 
use it to wash your car).

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-taint.html

> (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.

There is something wrong with the package, it is contaminated by software 
patents.

Regards,
Buchan