further package removals/potential package removals

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 00:55 -0500, Peter Jones wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-01-23 at 04:59 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 12:01 -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
> > 
> > > Possibly joe also ought to go to extras nowdays.
> > Is there any wordstar compatible editor in Core?
> > 
> > To me, seeing joe removed would be a severe regression. >15 years of
> > using wordstar compatible editors can't simply be ignored.
> 
> The old way of thinking about this has got to go.  _Moving_ something to
> Extras is not the same thing as removing it from the distro.
Well, that's not the problem.

The problem is removing "joe" means abandoning a whole family of
editors, which once had been the world's dominating family of editors
and had sustainably influenced a whole generation of users.
I.e. the problem is not RH moving a package from Core to Extras, the
problem is RH abandoning a Core system feature (Here: wordstar-
compatible ascii text editors.)

On the other hand, RH/Core seems to be wanting to continue shipping
various other editors, such as vim (which has had a lot of problems in
the past), and bloated blobs like emacs and xemacs.
IMO, if you want to remove joe from Core, you should be consequent and
remove vi, emacs, xemacs, etc. too and let only ship one single, small
and statically linked ascii text-editor remain in Core, may-be nano.
Otherwise I would recommend to remove nano, because I don't see any
reason why it should be integrated into Core.

> We have got to stop thinking of moving something to Extras as removing
> it from the distro.  Core is not the distro, it is merely a part of the
> distro.  Extras is another part.
ATM, Extras isn't much more than a "promise", ... we will see if it will
come and if when it will work out.

Ralf