[Pkg-ayatana-devel] press inquiry: using / not using Unity

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

Dear all,
  I'm forwarding a press inquiry by Bruce Byfield (Cc:-ed) about the
state of packaging Unity in Debian.

I'm no expert on the matter, but I can answer in some general terms.
There is no preclusion on having Unity in Debian; in fact, I'd love to
see it in Debian as I'm sure at least some of our users would like to
use it. I've also encouraged in the past people from Ubuntu and
Canonical to help us out, confident that they will be happy --- in the
role of upstream software authors --- to see their software land in
other distributions.

But ultimately work in Debian happens when someone is committed and
capable enough to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. This,
apparently, hasn't yet happened for Unity. There is *interest* in having
Unity in Debian (see for instance discussion
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=609278 ), but not
enough *work* to turn that into reality.

I also suspect that the work won't be entirely trivial due to the need
of patching some underlying libraries, potentially encountering
(legitimate) objections from those who'd like to keep those libraries
closer to upstream versions. But I'm hand-waving here, I'm sure people
from the pkg-ayatana-devel list can give you more first hand
information.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who could help Bruce out with his
research.

Cheers.

----- Forwarded message from Bruce Byfield <bbyfield at axion.net> -----

Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:31:03 -0800
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield at axion.net>
To: leader at debian.org
Subject: using / not using Unity

Hi:

I'm researching a possible article for Datamation. 

I notice that Ubuntu's Unity interface isn't in any Debian repositories, and 
couldn't locate any team that was working on including it. Could you or anyone 
else at Debian comment on what's happening -- or not happening -- with Unity 
in the distribution?

I would need any comments by Saturday, February 25.

Thanks,
-- 
Bruce Byfield, Burnaby BC 604-421-7177  (on Pacific time)
blog: https://brucebyfield.wordpress.com
website: http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield/


----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli     zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ......   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ......   . . o
Debian Project Leader    .......   @zack on identi.ca   .......    o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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