Dne, 14. 02. 2011 18:58:28 je Hans-J. Ullrich napisal(a):
Dear developers,I hope, this might be the right list, to start a new discussion. Additionally this also should read developers and ftp-masters, as theire word has greatweight.
Unfortunately, this is just a user-to-user list. There are other dedicated lists for what you're trying to do, such as debian-project etc.
Well, I want to like to suggest, to slightly change the policy fordebian/stable. Please let me explain. In the past years I am using debian (now for more than 8 years), there always was a problem with debian/stable whenever things changed, and new versions of applications or libs were not allowed to enter in stable. Doing so, all people using stable were not able to use theire programms before, as things changed. Among a lot of examples, just let me pickone to explain, I choose "Pidgin" (kopete, as well)As yahoo and ICQ protocols were changed, pidgin was released in a new version with new libs. Everything went fine for testing and unstable users, but stableusers could not use pidgin or kopete any more.Such things happen and will happen in our fast changing times again and again, and IMO especially stable-users want a system that is running stable. Butdebian policy is causing more trouble than expected.
Some of us use Debian precisely because it's not a marketing-driven commercial entity but a community driven distribution of *really free* software. I personally don't see any need whatsoever to impose shortsighted marketing mechanisms -- such as pointless innovation for marketing's sake, or innovation of formats/protocols for vendor lock-in sake, or the race to obsolescence for profit's sake, or the endless, unethical search for cheaper workforce, and similar -- upon a non-commercial, voluntary operating system such as Debian. Let's leave it to Microsoft and other marketing houses to produce sellable commodities and let Debian stay what it's always been -- an operating system, and an excellent one at that. Not just another sellable commodity. I don't replace my wife as soon as she gets the first gray hair, and I sure hope she won't replace me with a younger guy as soon as I get a bald spot. I honestly don't see why I should treat my software very much differently. So the Microsoft Instant Messaging protocol changed yet again? Well, don't use Microsoft Instant Messaging then! Or run Windows if you really can't live without Microsoft's proprietary "goodies". So Open Office can't decode the most recent version of Microsoft's proprietary document format? Well, guess what. That's not a coincidence. It's a marketing competition strategy, it's called "vendor lock-in" or "sabotaging the open document format". And you say we should play in their hands, essentially? No thanks. I don't think they should be imposing their will upon software consumers, actually I think it should be the other way around. I hope that some day this world will be Microsoft-free and Adobe-free -- just as it is now virtually RealMedia-free although there was a time some 10-15 years ago when it seemed that RealAudio and RealVideo were here to stay.
I also think, that major changes in applications (here are especially kde,gnome, Openoffice.org in my mind) should also beeing transferred todebian/stable when they are running stable enough or the current versions are out-of-state-of-the-art. Mentioning KDE (just as an example), IMO 2 years of waiting is a likttle bit too long, as a) every distribution has already KDE4 since a long time, b) KDE4 was running for a long, long time very stable and c) KDE3 was already for a long long time much obsolete. (the same things are at OpenOffice.org-2.4.1 from stable- obsolete, unmodern, bad usable due toobsolete/worse import/export filters)
Those filters being forced upon us by commercial entities such as Adobe or Microsoft, who are, again, driven by purely commercial interests. When you deal with a profit-oriented entity, newer is not necessarily better -- in fact, it rarely is. Newer is just more profitable: profitable for them. That's what makes them tick. Forget progress, forget development, forget the joy of a work well done. Even if they (occasionally) improve a product, don't be fooled -- their only motivation is that it may potentially sell better.
Which is perfectly OK. Good for them!What I don't get is -- why in the world should some corporation's profit matter *to me or to you*?
Please try to understand my extensions (and do not blame me, I am using testing for myself), but I think stable-users should not to be forced to choose between obsolete/not working applications or update the whole system.There should be better way (without dealing with apt-pinning or similar), my idea and suggestion is, just to transfer necessary newer versions (and hand- picked) of libs and applications to stable. But that would require the change of the debian policies (and of course the agreement of users, developers andftp-masters).
I like -- actually, love, as Barry White would say, -- Debian "just the way it is". My approach to Debian took some time. After a brief experience with Mandriva, and a year of OpenSuSE, with superficial interludes of ubuntu, I finally arrived at a distribution that best suits my character, my principles, and my ethics. My path was not light-hearted, nor was my final choice. I hope that makes it easier to understand why I don't want Debian to change too much. There are literally tons of other distros to choose from, many of them are updated frequently, some are even rolling distributions. And, of course, there's the final beauty of GNU/Linux: if none of the available distros satisfies you, you may roll up your sleeves and build your own. It's not that there are prohibitive EULAs or anything: all the source code is freely available!
I will be pleased if my suggestion is worth to start a discussion of it.
Consider my reply as part of that discussion. If I seem harsh, I apologize. I'm just very passionate about my beloved distro, that's all.
Thank you very much for reading this and all the work in the best distributionever. Happy hacking! Hans-J. Ullrich
I hereby join you in sending my warmest thanks to all the ~1000 Debian developers/maintainers/staff who made Squeeze possible. We love you guys (even when our video drivers lock up and when our kernels panic, we still love you)!
-- Cheerio,Klistvud http://bufferoverflow.tiddlyspot.com Certifiable Loonix User #481801 Please reply to the list, not to me.