[pkg-fso-maint] [Debian] Device-agnostic fso-frameworkd: ready to go!

[Luca Capello]

Hi Arne!

Please do not take anything I wrote in this mail as offensive: this was
not my intention.  Instead, I tried to explain why I love so much Debian
and its philosophy.  If something written here is actually not true, I
apologize and please someone more involved in Debian correct me.

BTW, I am sorry for the delay of this mail: I wanted to put everything
     in place before replying, read below :-)

On Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:33:06 +0100, arne anka wrote:
>> The Openmoko Neo FreeRunner is primarily a phone, which means that
>> someone who boots it up expects it making an audible sounds every time
>> he receives a call or an SMS.
>
> i beg to differ.

That is why I love Free Software: everyone can express her/his opinions.

> i know a lot of people who hate it and have their cellphones switched
> to vibration first thing after powering on the first time.

This is the key: *after* the phone has been powering on the first time.
Which means two things: first, the phone is shipped with ring- and
message-tones by default; second, Debian does not act differently from
any other phone provider.

> furthermore, the intended audience of debian/fso should be able to
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> understand what separate packages mean and thus could be expected to
> be  able to install an additional package to get sounds.

What is "the intended audience"?  I think you are a bit too naive here,
since you completely missed my point: not only because Debian does not
have an "intended audience" [a], but also because simply reading the
Openmoko community mailing list [b] gives an idea of how many
non-technical people bought the FR thinking it was a ready-to-use iPhone
replacement.

Thus, IMHO the success of the FR is also its worst enemy: how many
people are already unsatisfied because the FR cannot be used as a phone
for everyday life?  What if Debian will continue on this trend, shipping
something which by default does not act as a phone?

Please, no flame here, this discussion is about ringtones for the Debian
fso-frameworkd package.

> thirdly, if the sounds are installed by default, why should there be
> another package? why not include into fso-frameworkd?

Because Debian [c] distributes only software which complies to the
Debian Free Software Guidelines [d].  Please read carefully the Debian
bug #495668 [e], which originated from someone not in the Debian FSO
Team [f] (and I am very happy about this fact).

Another reason for a separate package is the fact that frameworkd does
not ship any sound by default, as Michael stated in [g].  Thus, the
Debian fso-frameworkd package must not ship any sound by default.

>> On Debian this is not the correct solution [2]: since every
>> modifications in conffiles [3] must be preserved [4], if you define no
>> sounds for the ring- and message-tones [5], it is done once for all.
>
> so far i found no config,

I already told you which file you need to modify [h]:

  /etc/freesmartphone/opreferences/conf/phone/default.yaml

However, to better document how to create a local configuration for the
ring- and message-tones, I just committed [i] .  Please let me know if
anything there is not clear.

> but removed the files and recreated them with touch, thus they're
> empty.

Again, that is not how Debian works, sorry.  Debian complies with the
File Hierarchy Standard for /usr [j]:

  /usr is shareable, read-only data. That means that /usr should be
  shareable between various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written
  to. Any information that is host-specific or varies with time is
  stored elsewhere.

> i think i fail to grasp the whole idea of creating an additional
> pacakge (with data not necessary only, maybe, useful) and then forcing
> it upon the  user.

I do not think I force someone to use these sounds, on the contrary I
clearly thought about different wills when I decided to go for the
fso-sounds virtual package.

> debian users should be familiar with this kind of decisions and able
> to ... but i repeat myself.

As I explained above, assuming that Debian users are familiar with
anything Debian-specific is a bit too naive IMHO.

> can we at least have a dummy package w/o any sound files if there
> absolutely must be a dependency? i simply hate the idea of having
> those  files lying around for nothing.

At least the Debian FSO Team [k] relies on do-ocracy [k], thus patches
are welcome.

However, since I am a kind of maniac for my Debian work and I do not
like leaving stuff undone, I already implemented fso-sounds-none [l].

A small note: frameworkd now produces a non-fatal ERROR because, because
since the ring- and message-tone variables are empty, the audio format
is unknown [m].  IMHO frameworkd should not even try to play in such a
case, but this is another issue ;-)

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca

Footnotes: 
[a] given the correct documentation, I would expect anyone (my quite-old
    parents included) to be able to install and use Debian, at least I
    contribute to Debian for these people
[b] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
[c] the Debian non-free section *is not* Debian, this is very important
[d] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
[e] http://bugs.debian.org/495668
[f] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianFSO
[g] http://lists.linuxtogo.org/pipermail/smartphones-standards/2008-August/000221.html
[h] http://lists.linuxtogo.org/pipermail/smartphones-userland/2008-October/000330.html
[i] http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-fso/fso-frameworkd.git;a=commitdiff;h=7208cb0e12af971a6e5844008369fe895172b8c8
[j] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEUSRHIERARCHY
[k] http://www.communitywiki.org/cw/DoOcracy
[l] http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-fso/fso-frameworkd.git;a=commitdiff;h=f62d50e3fe5faf800b49a145d3369985aadd330b
[m] http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-fso/fso-frameworkd.git;a=blob;f=framework/subsystems/odeviced/audio.py;h=3e0393115ee42f64823a8eefee3301d9251b04a6;hb=HEAD#l169
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