[Mageia-dev] About panotools patent problem (and other problematic rpms)

Tue Feb 22 22:18:53 CET 2011

On Tuesday, 22 February 2011 20:09:17 andre999 wrote:
+> Maarten Vanraes a écrit :
+> > Op vrijdag 18 februari 2011 14:42:02 schreef Michael Scherer:
+> >> Le vendredi 18 février 2011 à 12:47 +0000, James Kerr a écrit :
+> >>> If there are two packages, one in core and another in tainted, then
+> >>> doesn't urpmi need a way to recognise that the tainted package is newer
+> >>> than (an update to) the corresponding core package? I believe that this
+> >>> is achieved in Mandriva, because plf is greater than mdv.
+> >> 
+> >> That's abusing release tag and it work by pure chance ( ie, had the plf
+> >> decided to  be called the guillomovitch liberation front, it would not
+> >> have worked ). And this is quite inflexible, since people will always
+> >> have plf packages, leading to users adding some rpm in skip.list with a
+> >> regexp.
+> >> 
+> >> This doesn't make much sense to treat tainted rpm as update to core,
+> >> this is not the same notion. But we cannot express this in urpmi for the
+> >> moment, as this would requires some way to say "if you need to install
+> >> something, prefer this source rather than this one".
+> >> 
+> >> We can imagine a priority system, or we can simply say that if there is
+> >> the same rpm on 2 media, we ask to the user ( except this would requires
+> >> IMHO a better system than the current path based one to see what is in a
+> >> rpm, but that's a rather long proposal to make ).
+> >> 
+> >> But you are right this another set of issues to solve for dual life
+> >> packages.
+> > 
+> > after sleeping on this, i've had this idea:
+> > 
+> > why don't we rename packages in tainted?
+> > keeping them in the same name, perhaps has issues with search engines,
+> > (ie: which version do you get?)
+> > 
+> > i proposed renaming packages in tainted,(but not the release tag).
+> > 
+> > would it be a good compromise if we named packages:
+> > 
+> > <orig_packagename>-tainted-<version>-<release>  ?
+> > 
+> > the benefit of this could be adding an Obsoletes and Provides on the
+> > original package with the identical version.
+> > 
+> > for building, i may have this solution:
+> > 
+> > %tainted(%_optional_feature1 %optional_feature2 %optional_feature3)
+> > 
+> > this would allow the buildbot to look for %tainted  and if it does, it
+> > could rebuild it for tainted and add the particulars itself. this would
+> > simplify the whole plf/tainted thing easily. and since all 4 rpms are
+> > being built at the same time, you have no srpm problem either.
+> > 
+> > WDYT?
+> 
+> <aside>
+> First of all, "tainted" in English implies that the software doesn't
+> work.
+
+I have never seen that interpretation. Tainted is a synonym for contaminated. 
+Contaminated doesn't mean that it doesn't work, it means that you should 
+exercise caution in using it (e.g. you may not want to drink it, but you can 
+use it to wash your car).
+
+http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-taint.html
+
+> (Unless it refers to food, in which case it means "poisonous".)
+> So we should choose a more appropriate name, such as "constrained", or
+> use the Ubuntu approach and use a name which doesn't literally describe
+> the contents. ("Multiverse", in their case.)
+> Anything but something that implies that there is something inherently
+> wrong with the package in question.
+
+There is something wrong with the package, it is contaminated by software 
+patents.
+
+Regards,
+Buchan
+