Re: RH and GNOME

[Enrique Zanardi <ezanardi@ull.es>]

On Wed, Jul 22, 1998 at 04:27:46AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> 	The more arguments like this that I hear, the more convinced I
>  get that we have become too popular. 
> 
> >>"Petra," == Petra, Kevin J Poorman <ewigin@SoftHome.net> writes:
> 
>  Petra,> Forgive me for being frank, and don't get me wrong I'm all
>  Petra,> for debian. but these "selling points" are not selling points
>  Petra,> at all, and won't mean jack in the long run. Corparations
>  Petra,> will look and say, hum a package put together, by a company,
>  Petra,> or the same package put together by a group of
>  Petra,> vollenteers. uh, the vollenteers could have sabotauged the
>  Petra,> package...  nope, gonna go with the one I can sue. ... (Not
>  Petra,> saying that anyone would sabotauge a deb package... but...)
> 
> 	Yup, the world is full of pointy haired managers. However,
>  there are indeed selling points, to me, at least, and to others in
>  the free software community. I am not convinced I want to be selling
>  to anyone else, really, though I understand that others may want to
>  (distribute Debian to a wider market, I mean).
> 
>  Petra,> Debian is by far the best linux dist (IMO) but if the current
>  Petra,> mentality of "lets build a technical os" does not change,
>  Petra,> debian will die.
> 
> 	I doubt it. It may never have the popular appeal of windows
>  98, but I doubt if Debian is going to just quitely give up the ghost.

But we must retain a certain "market share" (oh, those damned words) to
avoid having to swallow any "industry standard" a hypothetical 90% Linux
market share holder may impose. Look at all the LSB stuff. We know deb
is far better than RPM, but we may have to adopt RPM as a packaging tool
if we want to be compliant. Do you think that would happen if Debian
holds at least 40% "market share"?

Debian produces a high quality Linux distribution because we are free to
choose the best solutions to the "integration" problems and we don't have
to put huge amounts of work in applying those solutions to the apps
we get from the net and package. If we find ourselves patching every
application we download just because the developer uses some wierd Linux
distribution that happens to have 90% market share and uses some
not-quite good solutions, we may find it's not an easy task for this
bunch of part-time volunteers to keep releasing packages in a timely
fashion.

>  Petra,> SOME attention should be paid to users, and other
>  Petra,> non-programer types. we are all for the advocation of linux,
>  Petra,> until it means carring for our users.
> 
> 	Say what? You mean we should give up our principle to take
>  care of our users? I do not think I want users that make me give up
>  my principles, thank you. There are plenty of users out there that
>  understand the free software community -- and are not dazzled by the
>  flash of cash registers.

I don't know what Petra thinks, but I want to take more care of our users
_without_ giving up our principles. Is it that difficult?
 
>  Petra,> Your selling point of commited to free software is a
>  Petra,> good one, but it to is also, not much of a selling
>  Petra,> point.
> 
> 	It is to me, and I suspect a fair number of the developers and
>  users out there. 

It is a good selling point, but we won't do any favour to the Linux
community if it is our only selling point. High quality, ease of use,
stability, those points really help to spread the gospel.
 
>  Petra,> gpl/artistic has it's flaws. lets use some of our
>  Petra,> colective knowlage, and cash (read this fully before yelling)
>  Petra,> to come up with a set of licence goals, and hire a lawyer to
>  Petra,> write it up.

Uh, oh, that's a totally orthogonal issue. I don't have anything about
our well-known DFSG compliant licenses. I use GPL whenever I can, and I
think our users won't complain a bit about that.

On Wed, Jul 22, 1998 at 11:39:26AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > 
> > 	The more arguments like this that I hear, the more convinced I
> >  get that we have become too popular. 
> 
> I know what you mean.
> 
> I read these:
> 
>  ``lets make Debian more marketable by compromising our freeware principles''

Was there any of those emails in this thread? (Petra's perhaps?).
Let me say it once again, to keep this thread focused:

``Let's make Debian more marketable WITHOUT compromising our freeware
principles''. I guess it's doable, isn't it? (Excuse me for the caps).
 
-- 
Enrique Zanardi						ezanardi@ull.es


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