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by test_epsilon 1812 days ago
It is one sided, by definition.

However creating a fork with the same acronym and name for the daemon or binaries or whatever seems pretty under-handed.

Was a release announcement for the original software moderated, on a list where release announcements had been posted without moderation before the fork? Was the author banned from lists?
2 comments
fundamental 1812 days ago
The Linux-Audio-Announce mailing list is a moderated mailing list and has been for quite a few years (10+ IIRC). It had been several years since the original non-* projects had a release announcement there and within those years the standard format of release postings had shifted from a more casual "tell us about your software" tone into "just provide changelogs and links to resources" type emails. The change over the years had not been documented in written list policies, so the initial LAA email was rejected. To the best of my knowledge no LAA ban was implemented, just a rejection of the initial submission after it entered the moderation queue.

A ban did occur on the LAD mailing list, but to the best of my knowledge the ban occurred due to some off list emails with one of the list moderators.

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viraptor 1812 days ago
The same acronym is... a questionable choice. But the matching binary names are standard for projects which are compatible replacements for the other project. You're basically releasing something with a different name, but implementing "previous-software-name" interface. This helps with drop-in replacement distro packages to.

That's why Ubuntu has the alternatives system. And why mawk / gawk / etc. are often linked to /bin/awk.

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phendrenad2 1812 days ago
You don't actually need to name your binary after your project you know.
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test_epsilon 1812 days ago
The same acronym is underhanded.

And it's entirely possible to use different software names for projects that implement a compatible API or service, the claim that it's for compatibility is pretty bogus. It's not "standard", especially not for an adversarial fork. And that's not why the alternatives system exists, the alternatives system exists so differently named packages can implement a particular service (i.e., exactly the opposite, for the equivalent in shell commands). So that's underhanded.

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viraptor 1812 days ago
Alternatives works that way, because conflicting binary names are messy to handle, but at the same time it works that way, because that's the behaviour you normally want in your system. You want "a grep" and "an awk" and many others.
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test_epsilon 1812 days ago
I know how alternatives work, and they are not used to make packages with the same named binaries drop in replacements.

They are used to make packages with differently named binaries able to implement standard shell commands.

There is no need to match binary names. It doesn't really help with anything.

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