Not all people accidentally using dpkg would be stupid. Perhaps they are used to a Debian based system, yadda yadda yadda... Anyways, upstream could theoretically be used if a patch was submitted to detect platforms to enable and disable functionality. For instance, on Debian, a dpkg binary would function as the full package manager, with apt as repo manager. On a Fedora machine, dpkg's platform checking would figure out it is fedora and automatically initialize alien functionality, or just fail with an error stating that if you want to use debian packages on this platform, use alien to convert it to the native package format of the platform.

On Dec 8, 2007 8:24 PM, Yaakov Nemoy <loupgaroublond@gmail.com> wrote:
On Dec 7, 2007 11:40 AM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 7, 2007 4:24 AM, Patrice Dumas <pertusus@free.fr > wrote:
> > The target for dpkg are not casual users, and casual users won't use it
> > anyway.
>
> And when someone wants to put a dpkg-enabled tool in the distro that
> does target casual users?  It's a slippery slope. We avoid
> being on that slope by not having a fully functional dpkg on the system at all.

Do you want to hassle most people that have a legitimate use just to
protect everyone else?  My level of tolerance is a one time warning,
and then for all security features to *get out of the way*.

Granted, we probably don't need apt-dpkg in Fedora, and synaptic is a
very bad idea in my book, (although I'm sure someone else would
disagree,) but it seems crazy to have to bend over backwards because
there are stupid people around.

-Yaakov