Re: [gfsd]Re: gas/binutils (a.k.a. we really suck sometimes)

[Phillip Rulon]

   From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
   CC: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
   Reply-to: address@hidden
   Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 13:24:48 -0700 (MST)

       We should merge: http://www.gnu.org/software (as I said in a previous
       mail) with the Free Software Directory.

   I think this is ultimately the right thing to do, at least for the
   non-GNU packages.

I think this is ultimately the right thing to do for everything we offer.
It's important to to integrate the GNU system as much as we can.  One
way to do that is by indexing and documenting it cohesively.

       And we should also merge all the pages:
       http://www.gnu.org/software/PACKAGE into the Free Software Directory
       too. Why having three different entities is a good idea?

   This is not a useful thing to do.  The directory points to the web
   pages for each program, but those pages are never inside the
   directory.  For a GNU program, the actual pages have to go somewhere,
   and that somewhere is http://www.gnu.org/software/PACKAGE.  So this
   should not be changed.

I disagree, I believe, in this period, that the directory should serve as
an axis about which the GNUism of a project revolves.  Each aspect of a
package that relates to GNU should be available through the directory.

You're treating the directory as a pure metadata archive.  That's a
valuable thing for the rest of the world, but it doesn't leverage
GNU as a huge contributor to the Free Software movement.  We might
be missing an opportunity thereby.

       Then we should recruit webmasters to maintain those pages (as somebody
       from webmasters pointed it out before),

   The package maintainer is supposed to maintain them, but in many cases
   they do it wrong.

These are weird arguments, since they don't refute each other.  Why not
imagine doing both using the directory as a facilitator.  Have the web
people work with the package maintainers to DTRT.

pjr