Re: I worry...

[Brad <lists@anomie.dhs.org>]

On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Christian Dysthe wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I do not really know if this belongs here, but I could not find anywhere else
> seeming more "appropriate" for this than among Debian users.

It's not that bad a place for it... Let's just hope no one decides to
escalate this to holy war status ;)

I'd like to ask anyone reading, please don't turn this into a Debian
versus RedHat flamefest. We're not competitors.

> I have chosen Debian for my personal use, lately my company has chosen Debian
> on several servers (including our web server), and we have suddenly become very
> dependent on all these people out there making Debian so damn good (mostly for
> free). 

Personally, i can't think of a group i'd rather depend on. All the Debian
people i've spoken with have been extremely nice (not that RedHat people
aren't). i especially like the way Debian keeps the stable distribution as
stable as humanly possible, and not breaking unstable too frequently
either (i have heard a bit about many broken rpms)

> nastiness of high finance business, and I am afraid one of these will "win" and
> leave the ones that chose quality and versatile over hype in a jam because all
> the talented people in the Linux world suddenly see the possiblilty to make
> money, and a lot of it.

Personally, i don't see it happening. Yes, there will be some commercial
aspects in some areas, but a big part of Linux in general is the community
and the hacker ethic
(http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/frames/hackerethic.html if you don't
already know). Debian has the strongest sense of community i've yet seen.

> We had a hard time finding someone willing to do our Debian server. All
> of the ones we contaced to get our web server built told us they felt "more
> confident doing a RH install" or they said: "RH is pretty strong in this ares",
> and some of them even had some nifty deals for us if we chose RH. How will the
> Debian community be able to fight in a market like this in the future? 

A lot of management-type people don't understand Debian because it's
completely unlike anything they've ever seen before. RedHat they can
relate to, because it's a for-profit company. Debian is a non-profit
organization maintained by people volunteering their time.

So, the people installing the servers get to know RedHat, because it's
what all the managers think of when they hear Linux. i have the feeling
that those sufficiently clueful manage to install their own servers.

> I dread a situation where Debian becomes a distribuion based on what RH
> employees contribute on their spare time.

Unless the state of the world seriously changes, it would be what RedHat
employees contribute on their work time. Open Source is one of the
foundations of the Linux community; if RedHat went against that, a good
number would choose another distro. (and yes, a good number would stay as
well)

> Please tell me I am wrong! :) 

You're wrong (: