Hello, I was having a nice conversation with a NM applicant about the DFSG and how it encourages people to reuse Debian, and this came out: > I completely agree. It is also interesting to note that freedom to > reuse is not only applying to licenses, but also to technical aspects: > derivative distributions can customise the installer to great extents, > and package configuration can often be preseeded. Debian-edu has > contributed several patches to introduce hidden debconf questions used > for preseeding only, exactly to allow derivatives to alter the default > configuration of packages without having to tamper with the packages > themselves. Also we track bugs in Ubuntu, we have tools to create > custom mirrors or live CDs, and possibly more. > I'm not sure if we have a web page listing a summary of all the > technical things that Debian does to make itself friendly to reuse, > I'll now ping debian-custom@lists.debian.org about it, because it > sounds like a good thing to have. I see such a page as just a short index, with links to more sources of information. Like: - The installer can be [preseeded] - Configuration of important packages can be [preseeded] - Many packages support plugging in extra configuration bits in [.d directories] or via [update-*] scripts - It is easy to build [customised installer CDs] - It is easy to build [customised live CDs] - It is easy to create a [custom Debian mirror] The point would be to prove that we're the best available distribution to derive from. More of a techno-marketing page than a documentation page, although documentation would be readily accessible via links from that page. Ciao, Enrico -- GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enrico@debian.org>
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