Name space pollution - there is another seqlib

[tillea]

Hi,
in the COVID-19 fighting effort of the Debian Med team where we try to package software that is relevant to do research on COVID-19 I stumbled upon seqlib as a dependency of some of the projects. At first I've thought that we just have this packaged but than I checked the URL and realised that the software that was using seqlib was linking to a totally different project. I have fileed an issue on "the other seqlib" to trigger some discussion about a sensible name. In any case we need distinguishable names inside Debian and I would love to do this with both authors confirmance.
Kind regards, Andreas.

[walaj]

Hi Andreas,
Was there any changes to the other seqlib project? I suppose the name clash is not surprising since it's not the most original name. At any rate, it seems this SeqLib is at a more developed point (even if not nearly as actively maintained as I'd like at the moment) -- is there anything I should do re: above?
Thanks, Jeremiah

[tillea]

Hi Jeremiah,

On Thu, Jan 07, 2021 at 05:12:27PM -0800, Jeremiah Wala wrote: Was there any changes to the other seqlib project? I suppose the name clash is not surprising since it's not the most original name. At any rate, it seems this SeqLib is at a more developed point (even if not nearly as actively maintained as I'd like at the moment) -- is there anything I should do re: above?

I never got any response which is sad. I admit that's sad and drained my energy to tackle the final target that is using that "other" seqlib. I'm currently concentrating on fixing issues in existing packages and will start tackling not yet packaged software once the next Debian release cycle will start. From a Debian perspective there is nothing to do for you since Debian is dealing with name space polutions due to a "first-comes-first-serve" strategy. I just kept you informed about the issue since there might have been a chance that you and the author of the other seqlib might find some common agreement. Kind regards, Andreas.

[mr-c]

@walaj If you wanted to be extremely nice, you could use this issue as opportunity to pick a more descriptive or unique name. That could benefit this project and it would resolve the conflict. Not that it would be "fair" to you :-/

[tillea]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 01:19:31AM -0800, Michael R. Crusoe wrote: @walaj If you wanted to be extremely nice, you could use this issue as opportunity to pick a more descriptive or unique name. That could benefit this project and it would resolve the conflict. Not that it would be "fair" to you :-/

I agree that Michael describes the situation in a very sensible way. ;-)