[arch-general] standards on AUR content

[Ruslan Nabioullin]

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 at gmail.com

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