On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 09:56:35AM -0800, Gabriel Gonzalez wrote:
I think the best action is to contact the maintainers. I imagine that most package naming disputes can be resolved this way.
I agree; like I said: (although we'd obviously hope that the parties involved would normally come to an amicable agreement without having to go that far).
Forcefully renaming packages crosses a point of no return, so we should be a little bit more hesitant to invoke that option. If we do choose to rename package, though, then I think at a minimum the policy should be that:
* The package authors are unreachable * There are no suitable alternative names
Hmm, if that's the policy then maybe I should become a package-squatter. There's currently no package called 'haskell', 'language' or 'concurrent', so those seem like good candidates to get started with. I'll just upload some dummy packages now, and hope that I can sell the rights to the names for $10 each in a few years time. Of course, this is an extreme (and hypothetical) example, and I'm not aware of any disputes thus far that haven't been resolved by the relevant parties reaching an agreement by themselves. But I think that it would be a lot better to make a decision about who has the final say now, when we don't need it and can make the decision impartially, than making it once we do need it, and opinions are biased by the particular case that needs it first. Thanks Ian