Re: the danger of specialized Debian
On Sat, Feb 12, 2000 at 07:26:34PM -0500, Jacob Kuntz wrote:
> is anyone else out there scared of the idea of project forking? is there
> another way to provide the same funtionality without adding confusion?
>
> i'm glad to see that people are interested in making linux availale to first
> time computer users, k-12 schools, and people with disabilities. the
> internet community as a whole needs more of this kind of initiative. i am
> however concerened that if not properly organized, these projects may dilute
> Debian's energy.
>
> perhaps instead of creating specialized branches, the developers interested
> in Debian for Kids, GNU/Schulinux, etc would consider putting together
> robust packages that fulfill these needs.
>
> am i off the mark or is there a real danger here?
Most specialized Debian are just project to enhance Debian in a specific
direction, not fork it. However danger of forks is still there. Corel
Linux has some flaws making it hard to upgrade a Corel Linux to Potato
(and to simply upgrade or install some packages). Stromix seems to have
it better but some issues are still there.
Since Debian got some popularities but by itself and by the
facts is more use as a base distribution, we should work on an
Howto-Debian-Base-Distribution. The points that I would like to see
addresses is:
How to enhance a Debian Official Distro (through yacs).
How to help resolve package/file names conflict.
Importance of policies (and where to find them).
How to protect your own specifics packages from overwriting.
How to make your distro upgradable from Debian.
How to let your users get secutiry-patches from Debian.
...
We could even have a special logo for those distributions. The logo will
be self acclaiming (we don't want to enter into certification process,
don't we?) but will give the users a way to know what they can expect
from such distro and fill bugs reports/flames contest agains the distro
if they do not respect does "guidelines".
>
> --
> (jacob kuntz) jpk@cape.com jake@{megabite,underworld}.net
> (megabite systems) "think free speech, not free beer." (gnu foundataion)
>
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