Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Sun, 2007-06-17 at 20:05 +0100, Steve Long wrote:
> keep. Or is it that Skype are a big company so we have to kowtow? /me is
> well-confused.

It has nothing to do with money or the company, and everything to do
with the number of people using it.  While ion3 is uncommonly used,
skype is much more popular.  Also, the only real "problem" here is
actually our own policy.  There's nothing keeping the new skype from
being added to the tree, whereas the new licensing for ion3 makes it
pretty much impossible, masked or not.

> (This is not for games, where practical consideration means updates are
> needed quickly, and are thus usually kept in ~ as noted. Although, using
> one of tuomov's ideas could change that too.. teh sigh.)

In this case, I would put skype on par with games like eternal lands or
other multiplayer-only games that need quick updates.  Yes, older skype
is still usable for people that have it installed, but for new users,
they'll need a newer version.

Also, remember that stabilization is *supposed* to be about the
stabilization of the *ebuild* and not the *package* itself.  Sure, we
also use the stability of the package to determine if we want to
stabilize an ebuild, but in the case of binary-only closed-source
packages, there's nothing we can do if something is broken, anyway, so
its stabilization status doesn't matter nearly as much.  If the ebuild
works fine, the package can be stable (or not) and there's nothing we
can do about the actual quality of the package.  Having a working and
usable package, in this case, is more important than some policy which
is really designed for open source software.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation