On Sb, 15 nov 14, 21:25:01, Marty wrote: > > I don't think Debian (or FOSS, for that matter) was ever about a > winner-take-all approach to software choice. That seems to have originated > in the commercial distributions, which have a financial interest in a) > controlling users and b) controlling costs. I don't think that philosophy > was ever part of Debian in the past. My mental image about Debian and FOSS is more of an eco-systemd, where survival of the fittest applies. > I had thought that all it takes is one > interested maintainer to keep a package alive in Debian. ... with enough time and skill and... > You might also be simplifying the problem. Software entanglement is a > complex technical problem. There's a reason it's regarded as lock-in, > because it's a technical cage that can be hard to break out of. It herds > users in one direction, so the popularity issue is not only irrelevant, but > misleading. > > I don't think there is a direct relationship between the number of users of > alternate software, and the importance of maintaining it. I would say it's > more of an opposite relationship, if user choice is valued. As less people > use "locked-out" alternate software, those alternates arguably become more > important to maintain to protect the choice of that minority. This of course > presumes that user choice is still valued in Debian, which is something I no > longer take for granted. And how can this work in an environment where nobody can be forced to do work? Popularity and maintenance resources go hand in hand. Kind regards, Andrei -- http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic http://nuvreauspam.ro/gpg-transition.txt
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature