Talk:Dropbear (software)

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[edit] Removed 'primarysources' tag

Part of the text inserted by this tag reads, "Primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article generally are not sufficient for a Wikipedia article."

The word "generally" is crucial here. I agree that this article takes a lot of information from a first-party source which describes the software in question. How can we rely on this source? Because this same source distributes the dropbear source code, and the assertions can be verified easily by anyone skilled in the art by reading this source code.

Since the source code is the item, as opposed to merely a description, I frankly think this primary source proves its point. I would add, parenthetically, that I use dropbear and it appears to do what is stated on this page. If the statements in this article could be contested, or if they appeared to be advertising, we could take these points up. Marc W. Abel (talk) 04:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

A note from the person who added the tag: the issue for me was not the existence of Dropbear. I'm not questioning any of the statements made in this article. What concerns me is its notability; is this software significant enough that it deserves a Wikipedia article? The answer might well be yes; as I know very little about software myself, I couldn't say. But as WP:RS makes clear, notability is defined on Wikipedia by sufficient coverage in multiple independent sources. This article doesn't have that yet (the only sources are related to the subject itself), which is why I'm concerned about it; if it can't be shown to be notable software, then it should be noted as such, and may ultimately be nominated for deletion. Terraxos (talk) 04:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reply to Terraxos

I definitely misunderstood your tag, so I am glad we are having this conversation. I thought you were challenging the accuracy and independence of the sources, not the notability of the subject. In that department, I think folks have become very permissive concerning software notability. (I also think there are a lot of developers writing pages for their own products.)

But back to the substance of what I think you are saying, I can make the case for notability and add suitable references. Dropbear is included in the OpenWRT distribution, and others, in lieu of or in addition to OpenSSH. This in itself is notable, but it's also linked from the BusyBox website. This doesn't make Dropbear a household name in the sense of Richard, Linus, and Bill, but it's head and shoulders above a lot of rubbish we see cataloged here. Marc W. Abel (talk) 14:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)