Re: Road map--or some such.

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Maybe it is feasable to use an old version of dpkg which is not yet
   that bulky?  Actually, I like this idea.

As I said, I am not sure on any point w.r.t. the package manager.  I
would like to have something that is small that one-two people can
maintain with ease.

   1.) Did you think about what software we want to include?  I
   strongly favor to not include thousands of redundant window
   managers, editors and e-mail clients (and whatever).  It is enough
   to include the most important packages; of course we have to prefer
   GNU software, so we'd use GNU Emacs rather than XEmacs, gcron
   rather than Vixie cron.  In some cases, we might also want to
   provide additional non-GNU packages if they are very popular.  Does
   this sound like a reasonable policy?

Yes.  At most, everything in the GNU project + any packages that a GNU
project depends on + anything that isn't includeded in those two sets
that a user might find useful.  If people feel the need for other
things, they can create a archive for it.

   2.) Another question is whether to keep the base-system small and
   if we find that important, how to do so.  For example, including
   Perl (which is necessary at least for GNU stow i think)

It (perl) is necessary to build some things in the GNU project (glibc,
coreutils--atleast the testsuite I think, and more).

   Personally, I don't think it's essential to have a very small base
   system, because a) hard drives are large these days, so it does not
   really matter b) tools exist so that we can use them; avoiding them
   even if they are useful for us does not sound overly intelligent.

A small base system is indeed not important.  Does anyone still
install anything from a floppy set so that this should be warrented?
And no, net-booting/installation does not count.  Though being able to
net-boot/install is something that one should be able todo.

What one _could_ do at most is to allow for a "smaller" base system
install, having the installer strip all binaries and libraries;
debugging symbols should be default though.


How should we define the "base system" by the way?  Bootstrapable
system (+ installation stuff of course), like the BSDs?

   3.) What do you think about having all relevant projects officially
   in the same package (like it is done for coreutils)?  Then it would
   be less work to assign copyright to the FSF (stupid reason, I know,
   but still...).

Will think about this, if it is easier to maintain it like that fine
by me.  And I might ask rms about it too...

   4.) I propose the codename "Liberation" for the first release of
   GNU.

Ahh yes, the most important part! :-) Fine by me.