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Re: Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork?



Joey Hess wrote:
Matt Zimmerman wrote:
On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 12:27:38AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
Oh, I forgot to mention that if Ubuntu continues to ignore Ian Murdock's
warnings about breaking compatability with debs, it will end up a fork
in my book even if most of the underlying code is substantially the
same, and this will be a very painful and damaging kind of fork too, as
we will get deb dependency hell.

If Ian were to approach Ubuntu (rather than, say, Slashdot) with clear and
genuine concerns, I would be more than willing to discuss the situation with
him to explain what we're doing and why.

As noted, it was in his blog (and elsewhere, such as some webcast
interview). I suspect he has a reason for bringing up this concern in
public not private, but I can't speak for him of course.

First of all, this whole discussion began when a reporter asked me a
question, and I gave him an honest answer--I didn't go out of my way to
start talking about it in public. As it turns out, a whole lot
of other people have the same concern, and that's how the discussion
started. If this was just me doing a bit of grandstanding, it would be a
non-story (if anything, the story would be "Ian Murdock is a dweeb".)

Second, I've been trying to start a private conversation about
this very issue since last November, and my attempts to do
so have largely been ignored. If taking the concern
public is the only way to get it addressed, then so be it.

The bottom line is that I want to head this problem off before it
becomes a problem--and it will, if we don't do something.

--
Ian Murdock
317-578-8882 (office)
http://www.progeny.com/
http://ianmurdock.com/

"A nerd is someone who uses a telephone to talk to other people about
telephones." --Douglas Adams



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