Re: [Gnu-arch-users] crypto signing take 2

[Joshua Haberman]

On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 14:47, David Brown wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 02:11:46PM -0800, Tom Lord wrote:
> 
> >     You really don't appreciate how incredibly _bad_ the portability
> >     and excessive interdependencies of free software has become until
> >     you're installing it on something other than the very small number
> >     of platforms that most people use.
> 
> I've seen it very bad on proprietary software, and it isn't too
> surprising to me that it is happening to free software.  I think it
> primarily results from lazyness: "Gee, it works for me."
> 
> Even on "standard" free platforms, I notice it.  When I go to install
> some particular package, I really have to wonder why it has to install
> so many other packages.

It could be that the maintainer of the package chose to enable linking
against lots of optional libraries.  Just because a binary package has a
lot of dependencies doesn't mean that the software relies on all those
libraries just to compile.

> What is even scarier, to me, is that many people think this
> interdependency is actually a good thing.

To the extent that it represents choosing code re-use over "rolling your
own," it is.

Josh