A sad case [was Re: pkg_install patch for testing]

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 06:10:46PM +0200, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> (1) Accept upper case letters in license names as discussed here.
>     If you disagree with this, discuss it in the thread.

I may not have mentioned this before, so I'd better send this now.
Yes, I know that you take a great pleasure in arguing with me, but
please stop, take a step back, and consider the ramifications.

If you go with case-sensitive license names, then modified-bsd and
modified-BSD are two different licenses.  As are gnu-gpl-v3 and
gnu-GPL-v3.  It is not a good idea to do this from a usability PoV,
since people tend to think of some license names in terms of acronyms
(BSD, MIT, GPL), and pkgsrc seems to have persuaded itself that only
lower case will be used internally, and death to all who oppose this.

So I'd urge you to try to think of some of the poor sods that you are
condemning to case-sensitivity hell, here, please.  Or even to think
of yourself, fielding all those PRs which state "Wow, your tools do
not do what I want them to do all because of a capital letter?".

To allow for this, I'd suggest a separate gnats state called
"JoErGeD", or "sTuDlY".

Or I suppose you could point them at the documentation, which
is...  where, exactly?

Thanks,
Alistair