[Fedora-packaging] code vs. content

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 01:02:05PM -0600, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> >>>>> "RWMJ" == Richard W M Jones <rjones at redhat.com> writes:
> 
> RWMJ> So I feel unfortunately this is a bad case.
> 
> Except that it's actually a spectacularly good case, because it
> perfectly illustrates the problem.  Someone thinks this is a good
> package and wants it in Fedora.  (Either that or they're actively
> trolling us to see what crap they can push through the review process.)
> It doesn't violate any guidelines.  You happen to not like the content.
> Does that means the package stays out?  I don't personally want to be
> the quality czar, but I also don't want to see people pushing their
> vacation photos into Fedora.

No, I still think it's a bad case.

Consider the cosmos screensaver that we carry:

  $ rpm -qf /usr/share/backgrounds/cosmos
  gnome-screensaver-2.28.0-1.fc12.x86_64

Those are some really beautiful NASA photographs, and I don't think
anyone would object to the 3.9 MB consumed by those lovely pictures,
particularly if you are in any way interested by space technology or
science.

I think if these were really beautiful pictures of London, no one
would object to 2.6 MB.  But because it's a bunch of rather crap
pictures, it makes a bad case for what I think could potentially be a
wonderful thing.

> Isn't there already a screensaver that will work from a directory of
> pictures?  Isn't that good enough to cover all of these cases without us
> actually having to carry a bunch of pictures?

A directory of pictures isn't a hand-chosen set of great photographs
that get installed from a single yum command.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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