svn commit: r539531 - in head/security: . vigenere

[Adam Weinberger]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 1:25 AM Fernando Apesteguía <fernape at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 8:49 AM Adam Weinberger <adamw at adamw.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 12:57 AM Fernando Apesteguía
> > <fernape at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > > +WWW: https://www.olivermahmoudi.com/programming/vigenere-cipher/
> >
> > Hi Fernando,
> >
> > That WWW is 404, and there's no mention of the software on Oliver's website.
>
> Hi Adam!
>
> I'm pretty sure I checked that, but maybe I missed it?. I will open a
> PR asking him about it.
>
> >
> > Is this cipher actively used for modern practical purposes? If not,
> > this sounds like a programming exercise and I'm not sure why it'd need
> > a port.
>
> Before including the new port I checked Oliver was the maintainer of
> other ports, some of which I had incidentally committed to recently
> (sysutils/mapdir).
> Some of his ports include security/caesarcipher that I assume nobody
> uses for modern practical purposes either :-) It also happens he is
> the original writer of the four ports he maintains.
>
> I read the Committers Guide about new ports
> (https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.html#ports-qa-adding)
> in search of policy but couldn't find any.
>
> Should submitters "make a case" for the new port to be included?
> Should the committer refuse if he/she evaluates the software is not
> useful enough?

Yes, that is a central part of the committer's role. Choosing how to
shape the ports tree is far more critical than committing the PRs to
get there. I don't ask submitters to make a case, but if I reject a PR
I certainly give the submitter a chance to change my mind.

FreeBSD isn't a museum, and software that nobody is ever going to use
places unnecessary burdens on the builders, on end-user ports tree
disk space usage, and clutters results when end-users search for
software. I'd charitably estimate that 20% of the software in the
ports tree was installed in the last year. And maybe 60% over the last
10 years. We could easily take out half the ports and nobody would
ever notice.

If submitted software appears insufficiently useful, incomplete, or of
suspiciously poor quality, please reject it. (I haven't investigated
the code here, nor that of any other of Oliver's ports, so I'm not
trying to suggest you do so here.)

# Adam


-- 
Adam Weinberger
adamw at adamw.org
https://www.adamw.org