Re: custom vs. derivative
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
My interest is 1) and 3), and the intend of my latest posts has been 3)
to support 1).
Well, I understood this and I perfectly accept your point.
You seem to want it as part of 4) which is fine by me,
but you seem alone in that quest.
Which is on one hand astonishing because I see great potential for
finding a sane consensus - but me alone in a naming discussion is
pure nonsense. I normally wait in those discussions and just step
in if something goes terribly wrong.
I honestly believe that we do not loose or upset anyone by clearly
defining who we are ourselves. Except perhaps those that wrongly
thought that they were part of us. But really you do not avoid that by
blurring the discussion with talking about all species of Debian-related
distros: In the end they will still be hurt when they realize they do
not fit our definition of ourselves.
Well, I think we come from very different ends to meet at one single point.
You want to enhance Debian out of itself. This is great and I will
not question this because I regard this as important work. My approach
is just different because I think that those people who did some great
work (SkoleLinux, Linex, DeMuDi, ...) deserve that their work becomes
as effective as possible and that their work should be moved onto the
shoulders of Debian. This is in the interest of both parties (Debian
and the project that started for whatever reason with some or even major
parts outside). IMHO that apprach helps Debian to grow healthy and
eneable the projects to stabilize by "coming home". I think both
appoaches offer an interesting working fieldand do not conflict with
each other but rather complete each other.
You _do_ avoid unfitting distros getting hurt by redefining yourself to
match all those your want to make friends.
Well, it is not about hurting somebody or not. The name CDD in my eyes
is not measure of a quality. It is rather a term that specifies a certain
strategy a project uses to reach a goal as close as possible. I have
not yet seen a proof which strategy is more successful.
Is that your current intend?
My intent is to spread Free Software as effective as possible. I do
not want to fight for a dogma. I want to see things happen in the
direction that more and more people adopt Free Software. I tend to
think that this goal can be reached on the shoulders of Debian quite
effectively and I have good reasons to assume this - but good reasons
are no real proof. If I try to "make friends" I do it for a pragmatic
goal not because I just feel good when havig friends (even if this is
a nice side effect ;-) ).
I like that idea. But a (related but) *different* one than CDD.
It is a bolder one, because it involves changes to fundamental Debian
structures. CDD does not require interaction with ftpmaster ;-)
Not in their current form. But I see you start diving into the
pool of problems that we have and you catched the decoy I have
layed out. Once we start (re)defining CDD make sure that this
definition is good /flexible enough to circumvent problems like
even ftpmaster (and no, currently I have no idea how to implement
this, but it will definitely not work with a too stiff definition).
The CDD can help push that bolder idea: CDDs help ensure that multiple
subdistributions maintained in parallel from same core distributions
works *without* changing infrastructure. Next step is then to convince
the d-i team to roll out testing releases tied to CDDs. Then it is
*much* easier to discuss if we want to tag some of those
subdistributions as "stable" with different release cycles.
Yes.
Debian Edu see themselves as a CDD. They promote their current release
as stable.
Well, I keep on saying that nitpicking about names does not help. The
Debian Edu people do a *really* good job to promote Free Software in
schools. They even promote the name Debian. So no harm to any of our
goals is done by their actions. I do not want to rank "thingies [123]"
against each other. You have to admit that even Ubuntu as "thingy 3"
has some kind of success in spreeding Free Software. Well, now I said
the "bad word" on this list - but what I measure is success. I want
to find out the reasons and what we should make better. So most
probably each "thingy" has its sense and we should make sure that we
do not waste chances by fighting each other. I have a clear preference
for a strategy but ignoring any other strategy does not help at all IMHO.
If you deliberately want a vague definition then why discussing at all?
Did I said that the definition should be vague? My intention is that
it should describe things that successfully develop in real life. It
would be stubborn and narrow minded to just fix on one single thing
by ignoring others that are - compared to the things you want to see
exclusively - much more successful in fullfilling their task to bring
Free Software to certain user groups. Debian Edu / Linex has a real
lot of success full implementations. Debian Med and Debian Junior
can not compete regarding the number of implementations neither with
the status of development.
Debian Edu is happy that they are considered a CDD now.
And I would be happy if Debian Med would be nearly as successful
in roling out Free Software to people working in the field of
medicine than Debian Edu is in roling out Free Software in schools.
The reasons for this are not that one is a "real CDD" and the
others "only" claim to be a CDD. I want get things working and
I'm just trying hard to find out what might be the best way to
do this. Finding out means discussing with people and having
clearly defined terms supports a reasonable discussion.
Debian gets bad reputation aming users if a CDD promoted as stable is of
lower quality than Debian stable.
Well, if I understood Debian Edu people right they are working hard
to become as close as possible to Debian to become as stable as
possible. So I think they at least share my idea of a strategy that
leads to a successfull promotion of Free Software. It would be
brain dead stupid if the Debian Edu people would cut their roots
immediately in a certain point in time while at the same time
stopping to be able to serve the needs of their users. Moreover
I think it is your turn to prove the statement that Debian Edu is
really of lower quality than Debian stable and in how far Debian
gets bad reputation. I _never_ had the impression that Debian Edu
would cause bad reputation for Debian - rather the contrary.
The CDD concept gets bad reputation among Debian developers, if
non-technical users file bugreports about packages only officially
available in non-stable distributions, but promoted as stable in a CDD.
Examples?
And while they do so we perhaps waste a big chance to enrole the
real power of the CDD concept.
IMO power is bad if it distorts Debian work.
I have no sign that the later would happen.
Please elaborate.
I hope I did - now elaborate on your prove that Debian work is
distorted by something else than 100% Debian and not following
your drawing.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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