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Cowpland FreeOS interview: "Corel to develop its own distribution"



FreeOS had an interview with Corel's Mike Cowpland. Given the fact that
Corel Linux is only a sized-down derivative of the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution, and that the contribution of Corel to Corel Linux is only
very small compared to the work copied from Debian, the following question
and the answer thereof strikes me a little bit odd:

(The full interview is at 
http://www.freeos.com/linux/interviews/mikecowpland.ephtml)

Q: Why did Corel decide to develop its own distribution rather than
   adopting or embracing an existing one?

A: We did look at several distributions but found them very limited. They
   were difficult to install and use and required an expert, which we did
   not find acceptable. In Linux, when something is not happening, the best
   thing is to do it yourself and that is exactly what we did. As compared
   to any other distribution, we received the highest rating of 9 from CNET
   in addition to being CNET's Editor's Choice, whereas Red Hat has received
   a rating of 8.

The interview is talking about Corel's relationship with the Open Source
community, and still it doesn't mention Debian with a single word. To me
it pretty much sounds like Corel starts to playing foul--not that they're
obliged to mention Corel Linux' Debian ancestorship, but this kind of PR
is on the edge of being untrue.

    Gregor Hoffleit <flight@debian.org>
    The Debian Project: http://www.debian.org


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