On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:32:42 -0500, Lamar Owen wrote: > > > Choice is good. > > > If you had written "diversity is good", that would be input for further > > discussion. But "choice" does not imply "diversity". > > You're exactly right. Diversity is something that just happens, passive voice > in English. Choice is active voice, and implies a responsible decision to > choose one over another, or part of one over part of another. Having the > freedom to actively choose is the great thing of Free Software. It has > nothing to do with diversity, although diversity of opinions is what gives us > the freedom to choose. But diversity is powerless without the choice to be > diverse. And forced diversity is the worst thing. > > But that is a hair-splitting semantic difference at best. Worse than that. It's missing the point. The different repositories don't advertise any differences between multiple packages of the same software. They only advertise that package XYZ is available. And instead of real differences, all the user gets are package bugs and other problems. For Joe User to be able to choose between multiple packages of the same software, he must know whether there are meant to be differences. E.g. but not limited to preconfiguration, desktop integration, initscripts, helper scripts. > > Multiple repos create competition. Competition in the area of creating RPM > > packages is not good, because package bugs lower the quality of a package. > > Competition in the area of different desktops is not good, either, using this > logic. Software development is a completely different thing. Two independent desktop systems can develop into a completely different direction. For instance, with regard to features, innovation or implementation. That can be benificial. Two independent src.rpms, however, are bound to what is included in the source tarball provided upstream. Most package differences, e.g. package names, spec file formatting issues or conditional build options, are only cosmetic and pretty much irrelevant. The usual package differences are accidental, e.g. incomplete or incorrect dependencies, wrong file access permissions, missing files or links. > Some repos repackage stuff built a different way because their > packager wants to build it a different way. That is their choice; and users > are free to choose to not use them. This is a major problem when multiple repositories don't work together. --
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