Re: An open letter to the debian community
On Mon, 06 Dec 1999 08:51:31 +1100
Frank Copeland <fjc@wossname.apana.org.au> wrote:
> David Blackman wrote:
>> Lately I've been thinking about forking Debian, into DWA, meaning
>> Debian Without Attitude. We'll drop the attitude, and the
>> pretenses, about what Free means, and get licensing deals with
>> Corel, Netscape, and Sun, to include Wordperfect, Communicator,
>> and Staroffice. We'll make the install process less cryptic,
>> include non-free on the CD and forget the Debian philosophy, that
>> the only way to learn is by doing it the hard way.
> I happen to like Debian *With* Attitude. It fills a very important
> niche in the Linux ecosystem, and if Debian changed in the way you
> want it to then it would be necessary IMHO to reinvent it under
> another name.
There are a great many people for whom the only value particular
Debian brings to the table is apt-get and friends. They have no
interest in religion, no interest or strong values relating to the
variations in freedom of DFSG vs OSD vs <whatever> -- they just want
a box they can build and administer easily, and Debian offers them
that by providing a system they can upgrade and extend over the
wire, and potentially apply that same distribution and
administration model acros a lab of hundreds of machines.
And even more interestingly, Debian needs those people. They are
the users of the world and Debian cannot surivive without a user
pool to draw new talent from as the old leaves thru attrition.
--
J C Lawrence Home: claw@kanga.nu
----------(*) Other: coder@kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
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