Partial truth (Re: Why other distributions ...)
On Thu, 23 Nov 1995, Bruce Perens wrote:
> I've been asked by various people why Slackware, etc., contain some
> programs that we won't distribute.
>
> The answer is very simple. We are more ethical than they are.
>
> We plan to stay that way.
Well, this is only partially true. There is another reason, which I think is
as important as that one: lack of time and developers.
It is really impressive that the main distribution, Slackware, is
maintained by one person, Pat Voldkerding (sp?), alone. It is really a lot
of effort, especially when people do it in their free time. The result is
that many packages are not fine tuned, bugs are not recorded and solved and
consistency between packages and even between versions is not very
remarkable.
Debian, on the other hand, looks promising because of its distributed nature.
It is a good concept to have general guidelines to assure consistency and
upgradeability and then each package is maintained by a different person.
This would lower the load for everyone, leaving them more time to do a
good job at maintaining the packages.
However, althoug the concept is good, in practice there are very few
maintainers, each of them taking care of many packages. Why is it so? Not
enough volunteers? Maybe, but I think that there is also lack of
willingness on the current developers to accept more people.
As an example, I missed a few packages in the distribution. In particular
I was interested in the Midnight Commander file manager. There is
absolutely no copyright problem with that package because it is part of
the GNU project. I asked in debian-user a few weeks ago if someone was
interested in making or using a debian package and I said I could make a
package if no one else offered to do it. I received a few replies of
people interested in having that package in the distribution, but no one
said they would do it. So, I thought that it was my turn to contribute to
the project. I made the package.
However I have been unable to find any information about how to upload
the package, whom should I contact and what should I do besides uploading
the package. I have asked in debian-user and either developers do not
read the list or are not willing to answer. I have sent an e-mail to Ian
Murdock, and no answer again. So, it seems that developers are not very
interested in other people participating or in having new (even GNU-owned)
packages available in the distribution. I wish I were wrong, but so far
it seems to me that way.
So, this is my question to developers: Are you or aren't you interested
in having more people participating and more packages available?
If you are, then you should reconsider the way you are managing it now.
If you aren't then I guess you are not going to be very popular.
Regards,
Fernando.
Reply to: