On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 02:07:12PM +0100, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: > On Thu, Jun 06, 2002 at 11:24:27AM +0200, Ivo Wever wrote (slightly > reformatted): > > Sam wrote: > > > > >And here's a third - http://www.vicnet.net.au/~rpds/ > > > > > >There are 50 elderly/disabled people in the state of Victoria in > > >Australia who get their Internet access through a Debian box. All are > > >members of the Rural Peninsula Disability Support group - they are > > >provided computers and pay $11 Australian a month for three hours > > >access per day. This is the kind of charitable project which can > > >*never* afford costly server hardware or software - were it not for > > >the Debian project, we would not be able to run something like this, > > > > I'm sorry, but this argument isn't valid as a defense for Debian in > > particular. You could use any other linux distro for this server; I'm > > certain you could find a similar project somewhere in the world where > > someone uses Redhat or Suse or ... > > True. But Sam uses Debian. He (apparantly) chose to. Lots of other > people have chosen Debian over the other alternatives. The reasons for > his choice are not necessarily related to elderly people. It could be > freedom, stability, ease of maintenance, performance, price, openess, > the nice logo or whatever... We have a P133 with two one-gig drives as our server. My experiences with Red Hat have not exactly filled me with confidence. Slackware would have been okay but upgrading even a single package takes a lot of time - which I, as a father of two (including a teenage daughter) - and a full-time job don't really have. I have to administer this box remotely on a 56k line (which is all that I can afford). Debian has done an admirable job for us for nearly three years now. > > Frankly I am appalled by someone trying to use an emotional argument, > > involving elderly disabled people, to support Debian. > > Using an emotional argument is not necessarily a bad thing (elderly > people or not). Debian *is* different, *because* of the emotions built > into the social contract. After all, freedom can very much be considered > emotional... I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was trying to bring emotion into the discussion - I was merely stating facts. No matter what motivation the developers have, at the ground level there are some very human, true stories. > > I guess we should rethink Debian if it turned out some neo-nazi group > > used our software on their servers? > > Of course not. And I'm not willing to rethink Debian even when elderly > people use it. Quite often these old folk thank me and the other volunteers who help at the project - and a lot of the credit, frankly, belongs elsewhere. I just thought it was an appropriate thread to pass along some of the credit to those whom it is really due. Sam -- Sam Varghese http://www.gnubies.com A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
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