[conspire] Distro thread

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Texx (texxgadget at gmail.com):

> Sorry Rick, I wasnt clear.
> Its not the RPM tool that is at fault.

As I was terse, the first time, I'll elaborate:  That's where the distro
policy comes in.

My friend Nathan Myers explained that at the Advogato link I cited:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170628221254/http://www.advogato.org/article/169.html

The term 'distro policy' means explicit standards for software architecture
allowed to be in admitted packages, i.e., mandated ways in which 
packaged software must be built so it meshes with the rest of the
system.  This should be, and _is_ in Debian's case (as Nathan points
out), enforced actively.

If you become a Debian developer (package maintainer) and attempt to
upload a new version of some software that violates Debian policy, the
automated checking tools will reject your upload.  

Nathan's point was the reliable way that package operations work on
Debian (particularly on Debian-stable) is a direct consequece of
Debian's well-developed and strongly enforced policy, _not_ a
consequence of its use of .deb package format or the apt & dpkg software
tools

> Its the nimrods who WRITE the damn packages who need to be hauled out and
> burnt at the stake.
> I dont know what passes for QA in RPM, but I sure dont see it.

To repeate, typically the problem is weak an/or poorly enforced distro
policy.  There is no problem with rpm.