trash-cli : Looking for a reviewer

[Patrice Dumas]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 05:09:36PM +0200, Tim Niemueller wrote:
> 
> In general, I agree that a good naming scheme helps in keeping things
> clean and simple. We should communicate this so that upcoming projects
> choose wisely from the very beginning and can ask existing projects to
> consider such a change. However, it is not the duty of an upstream
> project to foresee any possible conflict or animosity in this regard.

I disagree. In my opinion, it is the duty of upstream projects to choose
first a name that is unique, and only after a mainstream set of
capability is determined and synced accross implementation and there is 
sufficient history that the command is indeed something that should
belong to the 'core' commands that the generic name could be used.

> I can understand that the trash tool chose that command name. It makes

Me too, the point is not here. It is better from a strict and short term 
usability point of view.

> that if another application provides another trash command the
> functionality will be equal or similar. Then it would be a matter for

Not necessarily.

> the alternatives system to sort this out. In general this is the very
> reason why the alternatives system is there. In case of the trash
> command the thing that probably makes many feel uncomfortable is that
> there is no such de-facto standard like sendmail, yet. And thus one
> might bet on the wrong horse.

Exactly, and it is very problematic.

> The allegation projects choose the name "selfishly" is besides the
> point. 

Please note that I don't use "selfishly" in a negative way, but to
describe how upstream certainly do when choosing a name.

> An upstream project does not and should not have to please all or
> even "only" the major distros. Again, if upstream projects act careful
> and have this in mind, perfect, and let us encourage them to do so. But
> now renaming it in a package and thus diverting only in this distro is
> not a good idea.

There is the distribution list where this can be discussed. Debian
already makes much more renaming than fedora -- debian is still bigger
;-).

> In the case of player the name was chosen after a Shakespeare citation
> (cf.
> http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/wiki/Basic_FAQ#Why_are_Player_and_Stage_.28etc.29_so_named.3F)
> which is related to the functionality of the programs. So saying they
> chose it selfishly as if they did it to eliminate competition or
> whatever doesn't sound convincing, and they definitely didn't want to
> block media players or whatever I'm sure.

It isn't selfish in that sense. It is not agressively selfish but
neutrally selfish. This is a coordination issue not the war of names, I
am by no way implying that 'they did it to eliminate competition or
whatever', it was a name that sounds good to them. But they don't look
at the biggest usability and compatibility picture.

--
Pat