Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Wednesday 24 September 2003 04:52 pm, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 09:38, Alfredo Valles wrote:
> > Many people use RH so their community have the critical mass to make a lot of
> > packages and generate big apt-rpm repositories, that fact combined with their
> > installer and config tools may in time do the RHL project more popular than
> > the Debian project, that would be a shame but I think it is inevitable unless
> > debian become more user friendly in short time.
>
> We'll have to see. You could be right.
I don't think we have to worry about Debian disappearing. Just because
Microsoft has created a near monopoly in proprietary operating systems,
does not mean that's the only way to run an industry. Indeed, improved
diversity is one of the strengths of using free-licensed open-source software.
I don't think people should get paranoid about Red Hat as if it were
competing with Debian for some critical resource. The practical reality
is that there is room for much more than one (or even two) distributions
in the world. Is that inefficient due to dilution of developer time? Perhaps
slightly so -- but the trade is for the robustness that diverse solutions
provide. Different distributions may well serve different niches better. And
there's actually very little loss, so long as we're talking about free software --
the sources are there -- we are free to use what we can of each other's
work. And that's a good thing.
Many people use Red Hat, and quite a few use Debian too. The actual
numbers are extremely hard to work out because of the very different
distribution practices involved. Red Hat seems to appeal to people who
are used to proprietary distribution models, while Debian appeals to people
like me, who use free software largely because we *don't like* proprietary
distribution models. I don't have a problem with other people having
different tastes, myself. This way they get what they want and I get what
I want, and nobody's trying to force the other to conform.
It's the tendencies towards the latter that disturb me, when they occur.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
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