[LAD] Releasing source code is not enough, I think...

[David Robillard]

On Tue, 2014-01-21 at 12:40 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 05:55:04AM +0000, Filipe Coelho wrote:
> 
> > I think we should stop assuming releasing source code is enough.
> 
> Enough for what ? Users who don't want to install from source
> want packages made for the package manager of their distro,
> which will take care of dependencies etc.

Bingo.

... and packagers are much more adept at this than most upstream
developers.  It's not a very effective use of developer time to spend a
ton of it making binary packages.  n hours I spend doing that is n hours
I *don't* spend improving the actual software.  There are many people in
the world who can and do the packaging part, and few who can and do
effective work on the code.

Packagers provide a valuable service; having upstream developers try to
emulate commercial software distribution methods (against platform
norms, making their software weird and annoying) would be a giant step
backwards in several ways.

So, thanks, packagers.  If you want to make universal binary packages
for most Lignux systems, by all means, feel free.  I sure won't be.

-- 
dr