Re: "purity" package

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

On 4 Dec 1997, tibor simko wrote:

> >>>>> "manoj" == Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com> writes:
> 
>     manoj> Hi folks, This thread is wildly off topic now
> 
> yes it is.  i'm sorry i post here once more... but after your response
> i feel that i need to explain myself publicly once more, and to try to
> do it better now.

We all have much better technical skills than any other skills, like the
ones needed to understand history and cure human misery. (Although I
struggle daily with those very problems...like why babies go to bed hungry
when there is more than enough food? {the simple answer is hatred})

I have tried to make my comments more to the point and less inflamitory.
To the extent that I may have failed, my appologies.

> 

< lots of interesting, but way off-topic, information removed for clarity>

> 
> okay, now that i tried to explain myself better once more publicly on
> the list, do you still think that the comparison does not fail?  do
> you think that the bible or the qur'an or the talmud or plato's works
> or shakespeare's tragedies or <add-here-your-preferred-candidate> is
> not "more important" from the general education point of view than the
> purity package?  as i said:

While I agree that all of the "famous" works you site are far superior to
the text presented by the purity package (note I do not speak of the
program itself, as I know to little about it to judge whether the code
itself is obscene {a completely different set of standards from that of a
religeous discussion}), that superiority doesn't suggest to me that we
should reject the "runt of the litter" simply because it is inferior.

Debian packages are granted entry into the main distribution via their
licenses, as judged by the DFSG, and we make extensive attempts to provide
a location in the archive for almost any other package that a maintainer
is willing to debianize. It is that "governor" that controls whether a
package get's created. (the maintainer's willingness)

The rules for creating anything start with, "Do I really need this?". If
the answer is yes then there are probably others who need it as well, so
build it and you will have customers. The fact that a maintainer had
enough interest in a package to go to the effort of making it a debian
package, suggests that there was at least one person who saw value in the
package. That is the only criterion that matters in an open development
system striving to bring as much "information technology" into the hands
of others as is humanly possible. Whether it is specific to Debian or even
remotely related to UNIX or Linux, should have nothing to do with whether
a piece of software, or information, is created for use on a Debian
system, and only the license should govern its placement in the
distribution.

This distribution contains members who have, from time to time, used
language that others on the list found offensive. We didn't throw them out
(except for someone who used the word "idiot" {that's not four letters!}
in a public debate {which was agreed to by all parties involved}) so why
should be begin throwing away the efforts of our fellow developers?

Waiting is,

Dwarf
-- 
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aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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