Nice explanation. As a (hypothetical) user I would probably have struggled to see the problem.
I agree it's confusing. "@mjg59: I think the real problem with Xscreensaver is that JWZ thinks it's an app and Debian think it's critical infrastructure." But I expect there's plenty other packages with similar status.
It seems clear that strong wishes from upstream should be respected. It's not exactly too hard to fork and rename etc. The problem is that the expression of this wish by upstream was somewhat aggressive _and we should have been able to handle this without pushing the upstream to be so aggressive in the first place_.
The first mention of changing the name, it sounded like a pointless obfuscation to me, but on second thoughts I think it could work quite well.
Upstreams like Firefox maintain the ability to make similar demands through trademark law. I suppose we should have a way to respect similar requests without the legal fees. Either to prevent downstream removing update notifications. Or to simply request removal from a downstream. The stability policy creates a problem here too. I don't think current Debian policy really accommodates switching to a forked package half way through the stable support period, even if it was bug-for-bug-compatible.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at nvidia. Ex-biologist. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon and Bluesky.
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Date: 2016-04-05 09:20 am (UTC)I agree it's confusing. "@mjg59: I think the real problem with Xscreensaver is that JWZ thinks it's an app and Debian think it's critical infrastructure." But I expect there's plenty other packages with similar status.
It seems clear that strong wishes from upstream should be respected. It's not exactly too hard to fork and rename etc. The problem is that the expression of this wish by upstream was somewhat aggressive _and we should have been able to handle this without pushing the upstream to be so aggressive in the first place_.
The first mention of changing the name, it sounded like a pointless obfuscation to me, but on second thoughts I think it could work quite well.
Upstreams like Firefox maintain the ability to make similar demands through trademark law. I suppose we should have a way to respect similar requests without the legal fees. Either to prevent downstream removing update notifications. Or to simply request removal from a downstream. The stability policy creates a problem here too. I don't think current Debian policy really accommodates switching to a forked package half way through the stable support period, even if it was bug-for-bug-compatible.
-- Alan