> > trinity is not software locally installed by the local
> system admin?
> 
> Right now it is - but very soon it will be installed from
> mirrors, via
> the package manager; users are expecting /usr/local to be
> stuff installed by them not the package manager

/usr/local is for the user. What users want to do with their /usr/local is for them to decide.

Upstream maintainers are not supposed to install anything in /usr/local. When software is provided by upstream providers as part of a distribution's package system, then /usr/local is supposed to be off limits. Installing to /usr is preferred, but the appropriate installation location for non-standard packages that can't be installed in /usr is /opt. This guideline applies to distro maintainers and upstream providers, not the end user.

Anybody packaging Trinity for self-use can install to /usr/local. The moment those packages are provided for others then /usr/local is inappropriate.

Anyone building the Trinity packages for personal use only can install to /usr/local if desired. Start packaging for other users and /usr/local becomes inappropriate.

For myself I don't install any upstream provided packages in /usr/local because I use /usr/local for things I create on my own. I keep /usr/local on a separate partition, which keeps that file system separate from everything else. That is, /usr/local is mine and I do what I want there.

I build Trinity to install in /opt/trinity because I build my packages usable by other users with the same distro. If the upstream distro I use did not include KDE4 then I would build to install to /usr. If I was creating my own custom distro I would build to install in /usr because I would not include KDE4.

Darrell