Re: Gnome 1.0 debs?
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On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Christopher J. Morrone wrote:
> I don't really think that KDE is the best example. For quite a while, KDE
> wasn't packaged because of the licensing issues.
>
Actually, those licensing issues are still not resolved. The latest kde
version uses Qt 1.42, which still uses the closed source license. The KDE
debs are all packaged by one guy from the KDE development group. But they
definitely aren't a good example of Debian packaging slowness, because
they aren't official .debs. Packages that are part of the official
distribution would make better examples for the sake of this argument.
> Keep in mind that there is a whole staff of full time people working on
> Red Hat, while Debian developers are volunteering their scarce free time.
>
Actually, that's not the issue in this case. The VAST majority of RPMs
out there were not packaged by anybody on the staff at Redhat. That's why
they are so often inconsistant in quality, and why they're everywhere.
Redhat has a larger user base than Debian, and a large number of free
software developers use it.
It's easy to create an rpm file, and a lot of people will write some
software, then rpm it for distribution. But they don't necessarily test
it on any system other than their own, and they are not required to adhere
to a strict file system layout. There's no guarantee that the rpm they
make will work on ANY system other than their own. That's not the case
with any of the 2000-odd packages in the official Debian distribution.
Debian takes the time to get things right, which is why we have to wait so
long for a new release. Redhat just takes a bunch of rpms, throws them on
a CD, and hopes everything works. Often times it doesn't. (that's of
course a bit of an exaggeration, Redhat deserves more credit than I gave
them.)
I bet Debian has MANY more official developers working on it than Redhat
does, even if we are volunteers.
noah
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