Re: Q to all candidates: Universal Operating System
Hi Lucas
On 2019/03/20 11:29, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> All platforms somehow mention this motto:
>
> Jonathan Carter:
>> I like the concept of the "Universal Operating System". To me it means
>> that Debian is adaptable to different technologies, situations and use
>> cases.
I was considering also adding what I think the "Universal Operating
System" does not mean to me, but I left it out since my platform was
already getting a bit long-winded.
I do think that the main aim around being universal is aiming to keep
Debian adaptable to what a user may need (the free software aspect
already helps a lot with this), and also to remain general purpose. I
know negativity gets lots of attention in campaigns, but I feel very
positive about the great standard Debian maintains here and how well
Debian runs on everything from development boards to laptops to huge
servers. We may even see Debian on more phones soon, how cool is that?
On the flip side though:
* Debian is not intended to be everything for everybody:
There may be some use cases that Debian just can't support right now.
This is something that users of Debian should be willing to accept,
or help improve imho.
* Debian can't support every piece of hardware and software:
We have limited resource in terms of time and scope, and even though
our priority is our users, we also have to prioritise our personal
time on the project and choose our battles.
So with that in mind,
> Questions:
>
> 1) So, if you were asked to write a Social Contract paragraph about our
> universality, defining/outlining both what we aim for, and also maybe
> some limits to that quest for universality, what would it be?
Ok, this is just a quick stab by myself, not being a native English
speaker, trying to fit my sentiments into the language and style of the
social contract:
https://www.debian.org/social_contract
"""
6. We will aspire to build a universal operating system
We will make decisions that favour Debian being adaptable to a large
scope of different types of computing environments. We aim to support as
many common user use cases as possible. We will aim to make the best
compromises possible for our users when considering trade-offs in terms
of quality and what can be supported."""
That's a bit more crude that I would like, but I think it gets the point
across. I also think the concept of the universal operating system might
be better to get across as part of a marketing campaign than a point in
the social contract, but I understand that your question is more of a
probe than a suggestion :)
> 2) More specifically, if you believe that we should not aim for being
> fully universal, *how* (in terms of decision-making processes) do you
> think that we should draw a line about what's acceptable, for
> example to decide how to cater to the needs of an hypothetical Debian
> GNU/Darwin on m68k port? And what's your own opinion on where that line
> should be (specific examples could rely on debian-ports, release
> architectures, support for non-Linux kernels, init systems, ...)
I think "fully universal" is a bit of a loaded term, and difficult to
define.
That said, I'm very happy to encourage having many more operating system
kernels available, on many more architectures. On the same note, we have
finite resources and we also need to choose our battles. It does seem
that we have a none-zero amount of architectures that aren't useful to
99.99% of our users, and that's worth considering.
-Jonathan
--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian Developer - https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋ https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back.
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