Re: Doom of Debian Re: Debian Weekly News - February 18th, 2003
On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 04:31:35PM +0100, Davide Inglima wrote:
> Miles Bader wrote:
[snip]
> >Ha ha ha... such `enthusiasts' are hardly a loss, I think...
>
> Well... if you think that you can get rid of enthusiasts you are wrong.
I think he's talking about supposedly enthusiastic people who give up at
the slightest sign of trouble. Not the real people who stick around and
actually tries to solve the problem instead of running away.
[snip]
> Note: I am the first to say that the world would be better without
> linux-zealots or other *-zealots (put here any technical acronym, os name,
> hardware or software company or product). I am talking about enthusiast.
>
> A coding community can't simply live without people that use the code.
Back when free software began, it was the coders themselves that used the
code. (This is the one point that open source beats proprietary source,
IMHO... you'll be shocked to hear how many proprietary developers never
actually use their own code on a regular basis. Inspires a lot of
confidence in what they sell...)
Of course, I'm not saying that we don't care about users and we're happy
as long as we use our own software. But the whole point of asking DD's to
audit every upstream diff is so that we *don't* lose users due to
unscrupulous upstream shenanigans. I think it improves, rather than
jeopardizes, the distribution.
[snip]
> If people is already driven off because of the Free Software/Open Source
> community at large inability of getting a common ground and beginning to
> build a set of common tools which work well and seamlessly together because
> any coder is trying to do the prima-donna and rewrite interfaces,
> protocols, scripting languages and common utility libraries (and the schism
> between Gnome and KDE is a nice example of this happening [1]) then, what
> do you really think would happen when incidents like the one of Micq begin
> to spread more and more and more?
Umm... AFAIK, it was the proprietary software developers that rewrite
interfaces and protocols, and produce non-standards-compliant products.
Open source software is probably among the most standards compliant,
because its very existence depends on common protocols being used. Just
because proprietary software *appears* to interoperate better doesn't mean
they conform to open standards!
[snip]
> In the case of an open source project, OTOH, it's the author that tries to
> actively screw me and fuck my CS ignorance in the ass. Oh, yes, the code
> may be opensource, and if I had technical abilities I could read that!
That's why we're asking DD's to audit upstream diffs.
> But since I'm ignorant and I happily download the pre-compiled binary,
> my real fault is that I trusted code that I shouldn't have trusted in
> the first place.
Would you trust binaries distributed by Debian more if DD's don't audit
upstream diffs, or if they do?
> And the community that first gave me a false sense of security
> (peer-reviewable code! let's all play nice by the rules) now turns back
> their head ad show a face worse than any ugly popupadvertiser from the
> baltic rim...
I thought the whole point of a distribution was that somebody else (i.e.,
DD's) audited the code to resolve problems before it reaches the end-user,
who may not have the expertise to review the code themselves. So I'm not
sure I understand your original complaint that DD's being required to
review upstream diffs will cause the "doom" of Debian? It seems, on the
contrary, to address the very issues you're raising here.
> Ok, an explosion in this sense, in this kind of abuse of people goodwill
> to trust the other, has yet to happen.
Which is why we are now rather unhappy to keep micq in the archive, since
upstream has violated our trust.
> This is just an example, and I didn't really wanted to talk about it.
> What I would have liked to underline is this: it's true: Debian has to
> do peer-review of the code that distributes.
Yes. That's why it was suggested in the first place.
> But my question is: wouldn't this bring too much strain to the
> distribution?
[snip]
No, AFAIK. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
T
--
I'm still trying to find a pun for "punishment"...
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