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Re: Skolelinux not debian-edu? (Was: Question: what's wrong with KDE?)



(long quote, to provide context, since I am responding a bit late)

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 16:58:30 +0200, Gjermund Skogstad <gjermund@skolelinux.no> wrote:

mandag 25. april 2005, 10:36, skrev Jonas Smedegaard:

On 25-04-2005 09:02, Gjermund Skogstad wrote:
> søndag 24. april 2005, 16:55, skrev Finn-Arne Johansen:
>>Well, I dont reject Skolelinux because of KDE, but I've talked to
>>others. And My point is that we should not depends upon KDE, I'm not
>>even sure it's wise to depend upon "KDE or GNOME", but that's another
>>(although similar) issue.
>
> True, and in theory I'm all in favour of what you're saying. But I must
> press "in theory".
> The reason for this is the same as the one I used in vain when fighting
> (and loosing) the issue of whether Skolelinux should become debian-edu.
> I'm not about to raise this issue again, that issue is fought and is now
> history and the batlle is definitely lost. There is however a simple
> truth within this old history of a lost battle (and please take note):
> You can't fit the world on a CD, It won't even fit on a DVD. (I know this
> because I've tried!)

Do you refer to the choice of name for the organisation or something else?

The mandate of Skolelinux was changed from something like "making a GNU/Linux
based solution for Norwegian public schools" into something like "making a
GNU/Linux based solution for all the worlds schools which complies with the
Debian Social Contract".

 I think this change came after we had realised how much work making a viable
Linux distribution is.  The new mandate may sound like _more_ work, until you
consider that the new mandate coincide with Debian and debian-edu.  The idea
was that most of the work would be passed on to the Debian project, and as
little as possible should be done by Skolelinux alone.

 If Skolelinux remained a Norwegian effort, we would not appear as a strong
contender.  We tried reaching out to Denmark and Sweden, with little luck.
Our strongest sister organisation is now in Germany.  To get the contributions
and testing we need, we actually need an international effort.  Other custom
distributions have struggled when they enterded the maintenance phase; they
lost momentum.

 Besides, reinventing a bunch of wheels here in the small kingdom of Norway
is totally The Wrong Thing: Lots of duplicate effort!  To _not_ strive for
international collaboration in the days of the Internet is obviously
wasteful.

--
Herman Robak



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