[GNU-linux-libre] Third-Party Package Managers

[bill-auger]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2023 22:16:35 -0400 Richard wrote:

> Sorry, I don't know the term "TPPM".

"Third-Party Package Manager"

we invented that acronym to describe this class of program - that is the
property all of these share which conflicts with the FSDG - they are
downloaders for foreign repos, which are not dedicated to software freedom -
some may have additional features, but those features are not problematic

docker, cargo, pip, npm, many many more - they are all similar enough for our
purpose, to be considers as equivalent competing implementations of the same
misguided use-case: to search for, download, and install foreign un-vetted
software onto your system

that alone makes them all very ugly and undesirable from the distro's
perspective - all things being equal, we should not need any of them - they all
exist because windows and mac do not have proper package management; so every
programming language established their own

the proper way to handle that use0case, is for each distro to package each
library in their distro-specific format; but that is a lot of redundant effort,
and the vast majority of users will never want any of those libraries