Strategic Alliance Between Corel, KDE and Debian

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

I just received the Debian announcement about the alliance between
Corel, KDE and Debian.  This is potentially a very good thing for
Debian.  It may pave the way for a much wider acceptance of Debian ---
via the Corel linux distribution --- and ensure Debian maintains its
influence on the direction of the linux movement as a whole.

It seems Corel will be developing tools which make it possible to do
close to fully automated Debian installation and system management.
Presumably this will be a combined effort and that the resulting code
will be GNU licenced.

Two questions come to mind.

1. How is this work to be integrated with current package management
efforts like gnome-apt?  What would be nice is installation software
that allows one to have as little or as much control over the process
as one desires --- and the same for system management software.  If
Debian can work with Corel to develop such a system, based presumably
on apt, then Corel can use the "low control" part of the code for
their distribution, and at the same time, Debian will have increased
the versatility of their installation software.  The danger I forsee
is that perhaps the Corel development of "easy to use" package and
system management will occur separately from Debian package and system
management development --- in which case Debian will gain only little
out of the deal.  That is, we will gain an alternative, "user
ultra-friendly", management scheme, but we will be forced to choose
between this and the normal Debian offerings and of course we will all
choose the latter.  How much better if collaboration with Corel could
be used to develop all-round better installation/system management
software --- one which allowed every shade of grey between "user
ultra-friendly" and "user ultra-configurable"?

2. How does this collaboration fit with the gnome project?  Presumably
this collaboration means a significant aligning of Debian with KDE?
Sure Debian will always give one the ability to choose between the
two, but if much Debian development work is done based around KDE, it
would make KDE the natural choice.  Are the KDE and Gnome projects
opposed?  Or are they pursuing different goals --- in a way that would
make it possible to take the best from both worlds?

Cheers,

Mark.


_/~~~~~~~~\___/~~~~~~\____________________________________________________
____/~~\_____/~~\__/~~\__________________________Mark_Phillips____________
____/~~\_____/~~\________________________________mark@ist.flinders.edu.au_
____/~~\HE___/~~\__/~~\APTAIN_____________________________________________
____/~~\______/~~~~~~\____________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"