[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Litecoin package looks good

[Scott Howard]

On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 5:03 AM, Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob at member.fsf.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Dec 2012 07:19:34 Scott Howard wrote:
>> Hi Dmitry,
>> Litecoin looks good and ready for upload. Let me know if you're going
>> to do any changes and if you agree that it is ready.
>
> I think it is ready, from packaging prospective.
>
> However I started to have doubts whenever we really want to involve Debian
> into supporting Litecoin. As I learn more about Litecoin I realised that it is
> redundant to Bitcoin and have very little or no value.
>
> See also
>         https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Litecoin#Criticism

This is a judgment call for us to decide. I don't use litecoin. I do,
however, think it is potentially useful and recognize that there is a
community of users that could use the package.

Inclusion of a package doesn't imply endorsement, users are free to
chose whether they want to use it. However, if a new package
introduces bugs (either social or technical), it should be not be
packaged.

Upstream Litecoin is properly fixing technical bugs and security
holes, so there is not technical problem with the package. I think it
is inconclusive if litecoin is truly a redundant package to bitcoin
(since litecoin does introduce a faster confirmation rate, some
merchants may prefer it over bitcoin). It's up to you if you think you
should hold off a bit longer to see how the Litecoin project evolves
or if you think it is at a point where we could release it in
experimental or unstable.

Additionally, I did not hear of any objections on debian-devel or the
bug report for this package explicitly questioning the appropriateness
of litecoin in debian, so there at least isn't any obvious problems or
apparently redundancy.

I think there are packages, like namecoin, that are a very interesting
technical solution to a problem - but is no longer actively maintained
thus unsuitable for Debian at this time. Litecoin has a different
situation: it is actively maintained but it is unclear if it is
solving an interesting problem.

~Scott