Why is lastfm a required dependency?

[Ian Monroe]

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Modestas Vainius<modestas at vainius.eu> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 2009 m. June 22 d., Monday 23:51:03 Leo Franchi wrote:
>
>> Your replies in the email were against the argument for/against
>> liblastfm being a required dependency, but that is not what I was
>> responding to. I was replying to your complaint that amarok "attracts
>> many exotic required dependencies"---just to explain how I don't think
>> liblastfm is very exotic at all (it just is right right now because
>> we're early).
>
> MySQLe - still exotic, but I can understand why it is required (at least at
> the moment). ok.
> QtScriptGenerator - exotic (and really PITA), but I still understand why it is
> required (and no, it being embedded in Amarok source wasn't any better).
> Last.fm - exotic and I do not understand why it is required. Even when
> official last.fm player uses it, it will still be exotic.
>
> The more amarok is easy to build, the more users will test it. Even if a
> distro shipped Amarok beta without last.fm, why would you be angry about it?
> Do you want testers or not? Or do you want to push last.fm? Sorry for being
> rude, but it was not the first time I heard that packagers argument and I was
> ignored numerous times. At least somebody is trying to discuss now.

I'd rather have less testers but also less threads like "why isn't
Amarok scrobbling anymore" and "what happened to last.fm".

Making it 'optional' implies that someone gets a choice, in reality
the person presented with the choice is the packager and not the user.
Even if there's a separate package there's usually no clear way to
inform users that they are missing out on a feature or a trivial way
to install it. There's a lot reasons to just have it by default.

So in practice "optional" means non-existent for some users,
especially for those who use distros which have a "COMPILE->SHIPIT"
mentality. Just stating that you're not one of these packagers (which
we appreciate!) doesn't make them go away. :)

Ian