2012/5/11 Ruslan Nabioullin <rnabioullin@gmail.com>:
I believe that there should be more comprehensive, clear, and explicit standards on what content is allowed to be installed by an AUR package. There already exist two guidelines [1]:
1. usefulness: "Make sure the package is useful. Will anyone else want to use this package? Is it extremely specialized? If more than a few people would find this package useful, it is appropriate for submission."
2. IP, content type (?) restrictions: "For most cases, everything is permitted, as long as you are in compliance with the licensing terms of the software..."
The former is acceptable because "usefulness" is inherently subjective. The latter does state an important restriction regarding IP, but implicitly assumes that only software is permissible for AUR packages, when in fact there exist packages within the AUR which install only non-executable data.
I believe that it is overall community consensus that such packages are permissible as long as they install documentation for a particular software package, a set of *closely*-related software packages, or the Archlinux distro as a whole (e.g., offline Archlinux wiki), and that documentation not directly applicable to the aforementioned, any standards (e.g., FHS, OFM), and any books (e.g., Pro Git) are outside the scope of the AUR.
Any ideas? Do these proposed standards accurately reflect community consensus?
[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository
-Ruslan
-- Ruslan Nabioullin rnabioullin@gmail.com
Your email sounded like AUR is only used to provide software documentation or books (except for non-free ones). I hope that's not your intention, as it is not accurate. Rafael