Re: Question for the candidates: Custom Debian Distributions
Enrico Zini wrote:
This is to introduce the topic. My question is: what vision do you
have for the future of: Custom Debian Distributions; partly-derived
distributions such as Ubuntu; and forks such as Knoppix or Linspire?
First, for the record, my response to LWN on the Ubuntu question was:
>> Some have claimed that Ubuntu is hurting Debian by drawing developers
>> away from Debian. Do you agree with this? How should Debian work with
>> distributions that are derived from Debian? Is Debian
>> "infrastructure"?
>
> The only way Ubuntu can draw developers away from Debian is by
> providing a better environment for hacking -- whether that be by
> paying for the work, or being more fun, or being more satisfying, or
> all of the above. I think it's great that there are projects that some
> people find more enjoyable than Debian, and the great thing about free
> software is that those of us who prefer Debian can just take the work
> they do for Ubuntu and use it ourselves. And vice-versa, too -- all
> without anyone being unhappy about code theft or having to involve
> lawyers or formal agreements or anything of the sort.
>
> I think Debian works quite well both as a distribution of its own, and
> as infrastructure for other distributions; I hope it will improve as
> both.
But to be more specific, I think Debian's had problems for years in
dealing with derivatives -- not so much in making them possible, I think
we do a great job of that, but rather in taking advantage of them and
making it easy for derivatives to contribute back to us.
The first example I can remember is the work VA Linux and Joey Hess put
into the "slink and a half" release, which was basically an update to
slink while we were still working on potato. That was fairly well done
and tested, and probably could and should have allowed us to make a lot
of stable users happy by giving the access to some more current
software, without distracting us from our work on potato, or lowering
our standards for stable software. Unfortunately it turned into a
non-starter, with Debian being unable or unwilling or both to even work
out how to accept the contribution.
Likewise, in spite of Stormix, Progeny and others building useful
graphical installers for Debian, we were unable to get any benefit at
all from those efforts. That example has been improved by the
development of debian-installer though, which derived distros have been
able to contribute back to, and in some cases have taken the lead in
developing.
We've not managed to work out a way of integrating the cool live CD
concept from Knoppix into Debian proper either; though in a sense
Knoppix itself is pretty much a "proper" Debian live CD anyway. Ubuntu's
also managed to create live CDs for their distro. Having this integrated
into Debian properly would have a few benefits: it'd imply support for
more architectures, it'd make it easier for derivatives like debian-edu
to get a live CD for free, and in general it'd let people not have to
worry about trading other cool Debian features to get and maintain a
live CD.
Ubuntu brings that question into somewhat starker light; both because
there are more contributions going into that project to feed back into
Debian, and because Ubuntu is an active development project, there'll
keep being new things to feed back into Debian. If we're not successful
in managing that, it'll probably be bad for both Debian and Ubuntu; bad
for Debian in that we'll be missing cool features, and bad for Ubuntu in
that they won't be able to leverage the work Debian does in maintaining
old stuff, in order to focus on developing neat new stuff. In the worst
case, doing this badly could create problems for the viability of both
Ubuntu and Debian -- Ubuntu in that paying people to do all the work
Debian volunteers currently do might be impossible or at least
unaffordable; and Debian in the simple sense of why work on Debian if
Ubuntu does everything better?
One approach we could take here could be to make some space in the
archive for packages that derivatives have had to patch, and that
haven't been merged into the main Debian package yet; if we can manage
to deal effectively with the other components of that: dealing with
multiple active versions of a package in the BTS, dealing with packages
with multiple maintainers working separately instead of together,
potentially dealing with limiting uploads to authorised maintainers for
some derivatives, and of course any other complications that might
arise, then I think both Debian and its derivatives would starting
reaping the benefits fairly quickly. I suspect there are other
approaches we could take too, either instead of or together with the
above, and whatever approaches we take, it'll definitely involve working
closely with the derivatives to work out what will actually be useful
and effective for them.
Long term, I hope derivatives will be unsustainable, in the sense that
there just plain won't be any reason for them to want to work outside of
Debian. Short term, there's plenty of reasons why that's a sensible
approach, and I think we should be paying attention to that, and
learning from it.
Cheers,
aj
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