Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Automatic archive discovery, take 1

[Andrew Suffield]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 11:11:06AM -0800, Tom Lord wrote:
> What I don't see here is any advantage for your purposes (your perl
> program) to adding that hook.  Before the hook can do any good, the
> user has to update a local file of location mappings.   Why can't that
> update step also do registrations?  Why must registrations be done
> later, on demand from tla?

The obvious answer is "because the file references other lists, which
can be updated later", and the slightly less obvious one is "acquiring
a full list could be infeasible on account of it being absurdly large".

>     > You can't stop people from arranging tla on their system such
>     > that it will behave in a manner equivalent to that which I
>     > described[1]. All you can do is make it easy for people to make
>     > their own choices.
> 
> I only prefer ways to make it easier to make _better_ choices.
> 
> There's plenty of ways to make something as convenient as what you've
> proposed without sacrificing principle.

You're welcome to suggest one. I bet it'll either reduce to the same
choices, or be rather less convinient.


Note that all the problems you're describing are identical to "How do
I know that I can trust http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/ to point
to the 'right' place for address@hidden", and the answers are
"You don't" and "Define 'right'". There exist no manual mechanisms for
finding archive names which are appreciably better and which work at
non-trivial scales (trusted word of mouth or equivalent is hopelessly
impractical).

[blah blah blah government id blah blah PKI blah blah blah end of the
world blah]

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
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