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Ravexina
Asked: 2017-04-06 01:35:38 +0800 CST

Why some packages from universe are supported and others not?

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From Repositories:

Universe

The universe component is a snapshot of the free, open-source, and Linux world. It houses almost every piece of open-source software, all built from a range of public sources. Canonical does not provide a guarantee of regular security updates for software in the universe component, but will provide these where they are made available by the community.

When I run ubuntu-support-status, it says that I've got some packages which are unsupported or can not be downloaded anymore, something like this:

You have 5 packages (0.3%) that can not/no-longer be downloaded
You have 198 packages (10.3%) that are unsupported

I used --show-unsupported switch to get a list of these packages and most of them are certainly important to me. things like: openbox, clementine, etc.

As I found out, all of these packages are from: universe and multiverse pools.

However here is the thing:
I've got a bunch of other packages from universe (almost 500 package), things like: vlc, wodim, brasero, xfce stuff and a lot of libraries, why they are not in unsupported list? actually they are from universe and are in supported list.

I'm running ubuntu 16.04.2.

package-management

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Running apt-cache show on some of these packages reveals some interesting info:

    $ apt-cache show vlc | tail
 installing additional plugins (vlc-plugin-fluidsynth, vlc-plugin-jack,
 vlc-plugin-notify, vlc-plugin-samba, vlc-plugin-sdl, vlc-plugin-svg,
 vlc-plugin-zvbi).
Description-md5: c3a7a10e39c9ddd30da6653ec2238442
Homepage: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Origin: Ubuntu
Supported: 3y
Task: mythbuntu-frontend, mythbuntu-desktop, mythbuntu-backend-slave, mythbuntu-backend-master, ubuntu-mate-desktop, ubuntu-mate-cloudtop

    Note: Supported: 3y.

    Googling leads to the Ubuntu Wiki Security Team FAQ:

    • How do seeds impact official support?

      • Seeds determine in which component a package resides. All binary packages in the main and restricted components receive support for the life of an Ubuntu release.
      • The Supported field in the Packages file for the main and restricted components is no longer updated and should be ignored. (Note: Launchpad still generates the Supported field in the Packages file for the main and restricted components as part of its publishing process and this was used to state the support length for each binary for releases with different support cycles (eg, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS). Today, all releases have unified support lengths and as mentioned, the Supported field should be ignored).

    Which leads us to Seed Management:

    Supported

    The supported system provides functionality not included by the base or desktop systems but which meets the following criteria:

    1. it is very widely used, people are committed to it.
    2. it is not architecturally insecure, it is thus easy for us to provide security fixes and updates.

    This list would include popular servers other than the ones we include in a Base or Desktop install; additional desktop software; and a build environment. It is never expected that someone would install the entire Supported list of packages, they would choose specific packages that provide specific needed functionality.

    This list is all the extra packages we think need to be supported in our distro. We will accept contributions of additional packages into this list, if they:

    1. have an external maintainer who agrees to maintain them to our standard, in Bzr, using Soyuz
    2. pass a one-time security review from MartinPitt and agree to be responsive to him on SecurityPage issues

    Presumably the people maintaining VLC etc. have shown this added commitment and the maintainers of Clementine, etc. haven't.

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