Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 00:25:39 -0400 From: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" <jeroen@vangelderen.org> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> Cc: obrien@FreeBSD.ORG, Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: LPR<foo> in base or as package? [Was: Bringing LPRng into FreeBSD? - License Issues] Message-ID: <396BF343.B0A431DF@vangelderen.org> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007112308160.71063-100000@picnic.mat.net>
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Chuck Robey wrote: > > On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Jeroen C. van Gelderen wrote: > > > > Then how about we rip LPR from the base system and let people install the > > > printing system they need from ports? > > > > Yay! I think this is the correct approach for most software > > that isn't universally needed and for which 2 or more > > competing versions exist. > > I disagree very strongly. This goes directly in the face of > friendliness. Assume that *some* folks (and I say that > tongue-in-cheek) are actually not gurus when they install FreeBSD ... they > want (and very rightly expect) that a good assortment of default utilities > exist so that they can take advantage of the capabilities of a good > OS. You conveniently snipped the most important bit of my message: my sysinstall mods[1] that make installing LPR easy. If you are going to argue, please address all the points, including the sysinstall mods (which you didn't even look add, I might add). If you think a sysinstall knob isn't sufficient, let me know why but don't ignore the proposal and don't pull my quotes out of context. Thank you. Now on with the discussion: > I'm not saying we bundle everything, but I *am* saying that there are > a minimum of utils that should NOT be divorced. Print is very definitely > one of these. Why lpr and not Samba? Or more generally, what *objective* metric do you use to choose what goes in the base system and what not? I assume*d* that we'll never find a satisfying answer to that question (I'd like to be proven wrong however) so I propose to give the user complete control over what he installs[2]. Hence my proposal and the following questions: Why isn't a sysinstall knob sufficient to install the LPR of choice? Such a knob seems to work fine for X and the various desktops (KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker)[3]. What if the choice only applied to a 'custom' install? I.e. other install options (standard, express) have an LPR installed by default. Would this address your concerns? If not, why not? Note that having LPR as a package has an added benefit in that it allows one to easily set up a system without any lpr at all. Happens to be ideal for *all* 20 machines over here. I suspect I'm not the only one to whom that applies... Another benefit is that packages can be updated independent from the base system. If that is inconvenient we can hook the package update into the buildworld process. The other way around doesn't really work. I'm trying hard to not sacrifice user convenience. Hell, I even modified sysinstall which is not very pleasant... Cheers, Jeroen [1] http://jeroen.vangelderen.org/FreeBSD/sysinstall.tar.gz [2] Whatever form that may take. The sysinstall hack is just a quick prototype. [3] Which, one might argue, are much more important for a user-friendly system than, say, LPR. At least for a subset of our userbase. -- Jeroen C. van Gelderen o _ _ _ jeroen@vangelderen.org _o /\_ _ \\o (_)\__/o (_) _< \_ _>(_) (_)/<_ \_| \ _|/' \/ (_)>(_) (_) (_) (_) (_)' _\o_ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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