[aur-general] dropping gcin

[Aaron "Hussein" Griffin]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 1:37 PM, Amanai <amanai at freenet.de> wrote:
> Get a chinese developer ;)
>
> drop packages is not a real good idea. It goes against the rolling release
> philosopy and it make no sence. Incrase the numbers of developers to keep
> the packages in extra up to date. This make more sence.
> Example, it is already jre, jdk in jeopardy, last year it was "acroread"
> what is already in "AUR" and what will be next? Drop all extra packages? It
> is also clear to see that Jason Chu, have no time anymore for his packages.

Packages get old and unused. Dropping things from the repos is the way
things evolve. Would you seriously like it if we had software that was
5 years old sitting in the repos that no one used?

> Better make a opening for new developers from Japan, China, Korea how
> increase the development level :)

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. It's really not that
easy. *poof* more developers. The last time we had a call for more
developers, I had around 50 applications, and none of them from Japan,
China, or Korea as you suggest.

This isn't about man power. Simply getting more developers isn't going
to solve things. It is more logical to expect there to be a Chinese
TU, as TUs have a lower barrier to entry than the developers. And,
really, if 5 archers use a package, what good is it doing clogging up
the extra repo?

Regarding jre/jdk. Those are the goofy licensed, crappy Sun packages.
We still have IcedTead (http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Main_Page)
in our repos. This has nothing to do with man power. We have a better
alternative that is not crippled by license issues.

Regarding acroread - we are NOT allowed to distribute it. Plain and
simple. It is illegal for ArchLinux to redistribute acroread. This has
nothing to do with man power.

> This never ending up and down from packages extra, community, aur is a
> problem. If Users have to build all his packages from AUR then Archlinux is
> useless and you will lose Users and supporters.

Again, this is the way things evolve. It is not a problem, it is
progress. A majority of users will not need the AUR at all. Every so
often a user will need AUR packages for special cases. If it becomes
more and more common, then, damnit, do something about it. We don't
have a Chinese developer and I've never met a Chinese archer (besides
Gan Lu who posts on the pacman-dev ML). If there's a huge amount of
Chinese people that need custom chinese packages that we don't / can't
provide, then why doesn't someone build a special repo for all the
chinese packages?

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and
he'll eat for the rest of his life.