debian-multimedia.org considered harmful - redux

Fri Apr 13 06:04:06 UTC 2012

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 2:26 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli <leader at debian.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 01:07:44PM +0200, Alessio Treglia wrote:
>> Stefano, I think it's time to give you a clear answer, which is:
>
> Hi Alessio et al.,
>  thank you for this answer and to Andres for having pointed me to past
> exchanges on this subject.
>
> I've drafted a message that I'd like to send to Christian publicly
> Cc:-ing this list. It is attached to this mail for review by the
> pkg-multimedia team. (Yes, I know this is a public list and Christian
> will likely read it before the review, but I don't particularly mind: it
> will just anticipate a public discussion we'd like to have anyhow.)

As usual, a very well drafted and balanced mail!

> I'd appreciate your feedback on it.

Let me comment inline.
>
> In particular, I'd like to know what exactly you'd like to ask d-m.o to
> do: I've speculated a request as part of my point (1), but it'd be
> better if you could comment on that, to transform my speculation in
> something you approve of.
>
> TIA,
> Cheers.
> --
> Stefano Zacchiroli     zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
> Maître de conférences   ......   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ......   . . o
> Debian Project Leader    .......   @zack on identi.ca   .......    o o o
> « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stefano Zacchiroli <leader at debian.org>
> To: Christian Marillat <marillat at debian.org>, marillat at free.fr
> Cc: pkg-multimedia-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:25:45 +0200
> Subject: on package duplication between Debian and debian-multimedia
> Dear Christian,
>  as you probably are aware of, there are recurring discussions on the
> package duplication between the official Debian archive and the
> debian-multimedia.org ("d-m.o" from now on) that you maintain.
>
> AFAIK, the Debian team in charge of maintaining multimedia packages
> (that I'm Cc:-ing) is not happy about the duplication and has approached
> you about that [1], providing some evidence of the troubles that it
> causes to them and to Debian users that also happen to use d-m.o. OTOH
> I'm sure you are maintaining d-m.o to provide a useful service to Debian
> users, when some of the packages you distribute are not available in
> Debian proper.
>
> [1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2012-March/025498.html
>
> Personally, I think that principle is fine, but I'm worried about the
> duplication part. Not only due to the troubles that it might cause, but
> also (and more importantly) for the apparent waste of maintenance
> energies. Energies that could be put into better use if you and the
> pkg-multimedia team could find a way to collaborate, and to do so
> contributing to the *official* Debian packaging of the concerned
> software.

The harm is not only on the waste of maintainers time side, but also
on the users side. In particular, have a look at
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=660924, where a
confused user gets very angry because he did not understand my
response (#5). Fabian tried to explain it to him (#10) but it turns
out in #20 that the original reporter did neither understand the
technical notion of an 'epoch' in the version number, nor that "d-m.o"
is not an "official" debian mirror.

> I have no specific opinion on the technical claims that d-m.o causes
> trouble to official Debian packages. That might be true or not. Ditto
> for your allegations of conflict of interest in the maintenance of
> ffmpeg or libav in Debian. But I observe that *in* Debian we do have
> mechanisms to solve that kind of issues, if and when they arise. As long
> as you keep on doing your work outside Debian instead of raising your
> concerns within Debian, we'll have to keep on assuming that what is
> being done in Debian is fine and is entitled to the official status that
> come with the name "Debian".
>
> Thinking about it, I think we should choose one of the two possible way
> forward:
>
> 1) You and the pkg-multimedia team reach an agreement on
>   which-packages-belong-where. I speculate their request would be that
>   for every package that exist in the official Debian archive, the same
>   package should not exist in d-m.o, unless it has a version that does
>   not interfere with the official packages in "standard" Debian
>   installations.

Well, I guess renaming packages, and for shared libraries changing
sonames, would be acceptable as well. Note that this has been done for
the FFmpeg library packages in the past. It turned out to be quite
some pain, but maintaing the custom soname is surely feasible.

>   I understand that such an agreement gives a sort of "advantage" to
>   the pkg-multimedia people over d-m.o, but that seems to be warranted
>   by the fact that they are doing the official packaging, while you're
>   not.  If, as I hope, you could start doing your packaging work
>   (wherever possible) within Debian as well, things would be different
>   and we could consider solving potential technical conflicts in the
>   usual Debian way.
>
> 2) You stop using "debian" as part of the domain name of your
>   repository. That would allow each part to keep on doing what they
>   want in terms of packaging, but at least would remove any of the
>   existings doubts about the official status of d-m.o.

Maybe add a reference to
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=660924#20 here?

>   I can imagine that would be a painful step for you to take, given the
>   well established domain name. But it seems fair to ask you to do so
>   if we couldn't manage to find an agreement between you and the
>   official Debian packaging initiative of software you're maintaining
>   in an unofficial repository.
>
> I hope we can reach an agreement on (some variants of) point (1). I'm
> personally convinced d-m.o could offer a very useful service to Debian
> users, for packages that are not part of the official archive. But d-m.o
> really needs to do so in a way that doesn't get in the way of official
> packaging activities, otherwise it will remain a perennial source of
> conflicts, to the detriment of both parties.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Cheers.
>
> PS we really want this discussion to be public, so please keep the
>   pkg-multimedia-maintainers list Cc:-ed, as requested with my M-F-T
>   header. I'll otherwise take the liberty to forward your replies to
>   the list myself.

Thanks for this draft, I think it is really a step forward. I'm
curious if and and how Christian responds.

-- 
regards,
    Reinhard