<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Landon Fuller <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:landonf@macports.org" target="_blank">landonf@macports.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">They seemed to acquire a <i>lot</i> of traction on the basis of marketing; specifically:<div>
<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>- Truthiness (an assortment of “advantages” that turned out not to be, claims that ignored technical accuracy and nuance, and claims quite simply rooted in ignorance), and</div><div>
<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>- Outright negative advertising (“MacPorts driving you to drink?”)</div><div><br></div><div>It’s a new brand of open-source that I don’t really recognize and can’t say I like; it detracts from the community’s ability to collaborate productivity, and undermines the objective, rational honesty that should be at the core of any engineering endeavor.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I don’t really know how to raise the level of discourse; it’s far more expensive to counter to truthiness and negativity than it is to generate it in the first place. Nowadays, people who have never even used MacPorts will repeat verbatim the negative advertising propagated by Homebrew. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I find the whole thing distasteful.</div><div><br></div><div>-landonf</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>+1 to the sentiment.</div><div><br></div><div>However, perhaps we should take a page from their book. Look at the homebrew homepage (<a href="http://brew.sh/">http://brew.sh/</a>)</div>
<div><br></div><div> * It would be nice a similar minimalist, "here is what macports does for you" landing page.</div><div> * A one line copy-and-paste install option to get a new user going would be nice, too. It could check for and prompt the user for XCode, etc before actually installing. I assume this is what theirs does.</div>
<div> * A simple 'port create <url>' that would create a "typical" Portfile (configure / make / make install) in a auto-generated local location (and properly setup sources.conf) and then open the new portfile in Editor (perhaps with some helpful comments on things that might need tweaking)</div>
<div><br></div><div>A fair and concise comparison of the approaches a would be nice to have somewhere beyond this mailing list.</div><div><br></div><div>Alternative, a 'homebrew porting layer' (use homebrew formula in MP with minimal / no modification) might help, but I don't imagine anyone is looking to take on that amount of work.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I also don't think we've done enough to publicize the phenomenal impact the build bots have on a "typical install scenario" -- and to emphasize the "you need to use the defaults" if you want binary package usage.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Just my 2c.</div><div><br></div><div>I do with they'd drop their slogan.. Alternatively, <childish> we could counter with '(Hungover on|Bad batch of) Homebrew?' </childish></div>
<div><br></div><div> - Eric</div></div></div></div>