ideas....
Some fantastic ideas
First of all I would like to say how great Debian is as a operating system and a linux distro. I have tried many distribution but always come back to Debian. What I find wrong with these so called distros is that they always artificially alter components, components deleted/missing and loads of useless bells and whistles that never work..... I have some ideas which may or may not improve the project or least something to discuss about......
1) I just find that releases are being delayed due to the obsession with security. If Microsoft was Debian then Microsoft would only be releasing Windows XP now, understanding security and reliability is important however there needs to be a cut off point.
I would suggest having two releases of Debian, one "really stable" which could be released every 2 years, another one "stable" released every 6 months by taking a freeze of the current "testing" distro and spending a month (no more) fixing any major bugs. I personally believe the "testing" version is as stable as many of the other distros in the market. I normally use the testing version however when it comes to a release of the stable version, updates on testing are few with a increase temptation to switch to a different distro.
2)One real issue with Debian is a lack of admin tools, (such as yast is for SuSE). Considering starting a project to develop a range of gui based admin tools for Debian.
What are folks view on this and is there any other similar projects?
3)What drives the development of other distros is money, any investment into the opensource community, virtually 100% of this is spent on research and development. Any purchase of proprietary software such as windows only 15% of the cost is spent on research and development. There is major advantages for business and individuals to invest in free software, however what framework is place?. If I donate a million pounds to the Debian cause, what happens to this investment?
If such a framework was in place it could increase investment resulting in increase development and interest in the project. A typical example ...
- Some person(s) has an idea for a project (advert in the newyork times to a general software project).
- A project leader is allocated so long there is enough interest. (Could be voted upon)
- Advert placed on the Debian site (possibly in a new so called classified section)
- Possible investor(s) contributes money to this project.
- The investment is placed into a Escrow type account.
- If the project is completed on the time the allocated investment is passed to the project leader.
- The would be the projects leaders responsibility to share the contribution accordingly.
- The project is only completed so long its agreed upon by the investor and the project leader.
So those are the ideas, now flame me.
John.
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