Before you flame me, I think RPMS are a necessary evil, so I am not advocating not having them.
That said, RPMS suck and LSB sucks even more. To me its the old how do we get windows users to switch to linux, answer you don't. If people aren't willing to install from source they are going to have problems.
I think putting every instance of acs in /var really sucks because then you have to give users permission to /var/theiracs. In reality installations should be in /home/user/acs. This actually follows the FHS as the program is really user data not system data.
One of the big drawbacks of RPM is non-interactivity. You can't ask the user questions so all you can really do is setup a default acs in some directory and then copy the files to the new server. In this case what does RPM buy you? As noted above, you lose any changes you made on upgrades unless you mark files.
All in all, I personally feel that RPMS may be good for letting someone make a test server to get a feel for the components but I don't see how RPM will significantly increase our user base. It is a technical issue, and you will have to have some technical ability to use it. Not everything can be packaged and be usable.
Now if you want to talk about the marketing aspect of having an RPM that is a different matter, it may get some people to try it, but again after they set it up....
Just my thoughts.
