Spamming PyPI with stupid packages

Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info
Tue Jan 3 20:28:59 EST 2012


On Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:08:47 -0800, Ethan Furman wrote:

[...]
>> "maybe policing uploads is worse than cluttering PyPI's disk space and
>> RSS feed with dumb 1 KB packages." (Matt Chaput)
>> 
>> I'd drop the "maybe".
> 
> It's hard enough finding what one wants without having to wade through
> crap.  PyPI is not the place for it.

I agree. But who gets to choose which packages are "serious" enough to 
deserve to be on PyPI? Or good enough?

The cost of allowing anyone the freedom to publish their work is that 
some published work will be crap.

Besides, I find it hard to believe that the search facilities on PyPI are 
so bad that there would be any searches that come up with "girlfriend.py" 
or "car.py" as false positives.

Seriously, the over-reaction here is something that has to be seen to be 
believed. The original complaint is over a couple of entries in an RSS 
feed and showing up on the front page of PyPI, perhaps a dozen words in 
total. The reaction has been thousands of words arguing back and forth.


-- 
Steven



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