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Re: custom vs. derivative



On Fri, 11 Apr 2008, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

It is rather a term that specifies a certain strategy a project uses
to reach a goal as close as possible.

Then I indeed misunderstood.  I thought it specified the goal itself.

Well, implementing a CDD can be one goal.  It might be a milestone
on the overall goal to promote Free Software.  It depends on the point
of view but I always try keep the general goal in mind.

My intent is to spread Free Software as effective as possible.

Your intend in life, or your intend with CDD?

In my eyes CDD is the way to go.  I try to implement CDDs to come
closer to the goal Debian as a whole has.

I do not want to fight for a dogma.

Neither did I.  But I did want to work hard to clarify that strict
definition, I thought we had in common.

If you _thought_ that we had it in common do you currently do not
think any more that we both try to find a defintion for CDD?  If
yes, why?

I do not want to rank "thingies [123]" against each other.

Neither did I.

Not explicitely.  But the tenor of several discussions was that some
Debian Edu people wanted to get the CDD "auality stamp" and you refused
to put it on their label.  It was never explicitely said so - but I
felt that this was one source of the trouble in all the discussion.

Did I said that the definition should be vague?

CDD is about being completely inside Debian, right?

I agree.

Except that when picking Debian Edu as an example not currently fitting
that definition, you call it nitpicking, praising what they do for Free
Software.

Well, there is a debian-edu source package inside Debian (and other
packages debian-edu-*.  How would you actually call this?  Is this
a CDD or is it not?  My perception of Debian Edu is that there is
a huge amount of education support perfectly inside Debian.  This is
what I call Debian Edu CDD.  They have an Alioth project and several
DDs are working on Education related packages.  They actually use the
cdd toolkit.  Perhaps the problem is that we even need a clear definition
of Debian Edu.  You blame them to be outside of Debian because they
are releasing some CDs / DVDs that contain other stuff than plain
Debian.  I can not deny that they do so but in how far is it forbidden
to take CDD stuff from Debian and bundle it to a separate product
call it "SkoleLinux / Debian Edu"?  Does this make all internal work
void? I don't think so and I'm perfectly happy that these brave
people did a great job in making Debian more flexible to keep the
diff to their final product as small as possible.

So we are *not* discussing CDD, but Free Software in general?

On this list we are talking about CDD.  My motivation to talk on
this list is to enhance Debian to distribute Free Software even
more effectively than it has done in the past.  Your motivation
might vary but I think we are on the same side.

Or we are *not* discussing things inside Debian, but just things
_getting_ there eventually?

I don't like your either this or that approach.  We are discussing
things that are inside Debian and Debian is currently missing things
that need to be added.  It is perfectly fine for me if you want to
deal with things that are completely inside, but how do you think
they just came inside Debian?  At one point in time they were adopted
and I like to see Debian as an open system that is flexible enouth to
adopt and finally includes things.  I fail to see the contradiction
you are trying to express above.

Sorry - I suddently lost interest in all this.  I am wasting my time!
Free Software is super cool!
Debian Edu is supercool!
Larry Wall is super cool!
CDD is, well, If only I knew.  I thought I did.
Good luck with the project!

Well, if this was intended as famous last words I have seen cooler
ones.  Would be sad to see you leave this way.

"distorted by things not 100% Debian but claiming to be" was my point.

OK, perhaps I missed your point.  But what do you think about
_my_ perception of Debian Edu I have explained above.  This might
be another IMHO defintion - but I havn't seen a clear defintion
about what Debian Edu actually is.

Rereading the cdd-doc paper I see that not all Debian Edu / Skolelinux
relations are very clearly explained. This might be caused by my wrong
perception but I asked here on this list several times for proof reading -
so you missed your chance to fix things and you never filed a bug report
about thes issues.  The paper even says in ch-todo.en.html#s-visibility


  Provide separate install CDs

    By completely ignoring the installation of the official installation
    CD each Custom Debian Distribution can offer a separate installation
    CD. This will be done anyway for certain practical reasons (see for
    instance the Debian-Edu - SkoleLinux approach). But this is really
    no solution we could prefer because this does not work if the user
    wants to install more than one Custom Debian Distribution on one
    computer.


The goal to be able to have more than one CDD on a computer was one
which I personally do not share for certain reasons but Ben Armstrong
(famous from Debian Junior beeing the first CDD and inventor of the
concept) insisted on this.  What do you think?  Should we explicitely
disallow to make a separate installer?  Well, we can not disallow
people to use Free Software as they want.  Will the effort a CDD has
done inside Debian will be ignored because some people prepared an
extra installer?

Perhaps I continuosely fail to see your point.  I also fail to see the
point why you think you wasted your time in the CDD project because
our motivations to work on this seem to diverge.  We are currently very
view people who have to find a decision about a definition.  Just write
down the part you are interested in (well, please not in this lengthy
thread) and see how many people disagree with it.  The arguing here
on this list is just time consuming.

Kind regards

     Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de


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