consider the source
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jimf Dec 19, 2006 1:34 PM EDT |
Does anyone find it meaningful that ZDNet and our old pal Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols are the first to start whining about Debian internal politics? |
| tuxchick Dec 19, 2006 1:49 PM EDT |
SJV makes me etch. bwahaha. |
| azerthoth Dec 19, 2006 2:43 PM EDT |
Bah Anyone with experiance with Debian knows that any date given needs to have 6 months tacked on for good measure. The fact that someone who supports the M$/Novell deal as a good thing now twists the meaning of a blog post into a bash against a different linux distro doesnt mean much to me. This is just another nail in Steve's credability coffin. p.s. Most of us who run debian as one of our chosen distro's knows that even debian tesing is more stable than the majority of other distro's out there. When it finally does get listed as stable we KNOW its going to be a rock. |
| tuxchick Dec 19, 2006 3:04 PM EDT |
You must admit, Debian is a great soap opera. I'm amazed they get anything done. |
| jimf Dec 19, 2006 3:10 PM EDT |
> Debian is a great soap opera Maybe they could sindicate that! Who knows, popularize Linux and an acceptable way to make money for the project :) ... |
| azerthoth Dec 19, 2006 3:18 PM EDT |
"As the developer turns" Gives me the mental image of a bunch of pigmies around a bonfire working on rotiserrie programmer. *evil grin* |
| tuxchick Dec 19, 2006 3:29 PM EDT |
Coders roasting on an open fiiire.... Jack Frost nipping at your nose..... Sex sells soap operas. Where we going to find any for a Debian soap? |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 19, 2006 3:48 PM EDT |
Online ofcourse :-) |
| bigg Dec 19, 2006 3:56 PM EDT |
Is it just me, or has sjvn really turned anti-open source the last year? I don't remember him always being that way. I think he hates Debian because it's too free. He's really become negative towards anyone who thinks open source software can work. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 19, 2006 4:07 PM EDT |
>Is it just me, or has sjvn really turned anti-open source the last year? I don't remember him always being that way. I think he hates Debian because it's too free. It's just you. Just kidding! I used to enjoy reading his columns, but I think he has gotten a little caustic towards Free Software, especially against the "hardliners" who support such radical ideas as the GPLv3. I've really tuned him out over the past few months. |
| tuxchick Dec 19, 2006 4:21 PM EDT |
I'm not feeling like digging up any quotes, but he has said more than once that he just loves the heck out of open source but.... and that "but" says it all. |
| jimf Dec 19, 2006 4:41 PM EDT |
sjv-n comes up with insignificant but pleasant pieces on Linux every so often to convince us he's on our side, but then, immediately goes back to the FUD and very negative coverage of anything Linux. This confused me for a while, but looking at it over time, it becomes clear that he's probably in the pay of some master, and, certainly not any friend of Linux. |
| jdixon Dec 19, 2006 5:39 PM EDT |
... he's probably in the pay of some master, and, certainly not any friend of Linux. Perhaps not, but he has always been very much on IBM's side in the SCO case. He's always argued that SCO didn't have a case. |
| jimf Dec 19, 2006 5:50 PM EDT |
> He's always argued that SCO didn't have a case. Which may mean he just doesn't like SCO ;-) |
| jdixon Dec 19, 2006 5:54 PM EDT |
> Which may mean he just doesn't like SCO ;-) So at least he has good taste. |
| dinotrac Dec 19, 2006 6:02 PM EDT |
And to think - You guys had just about softened me up to try Debian again after all these years. Debian was my first Linux distro, and I stayed with it until the QT/KDE fiasco started making it well-nigh impossible to keep my unstable (back in the old days before test) KDE desktop running satisfactorily. Switched to SuSE and hadn't considered going back until recently. Good to be reminded that Debian is a large community of equals, many of whom have goals more important than putting out a quality distribution. |
| swbrown Dec 19, 2006 6:04 PM EDT |
He's whiny and trolls. I don't know why anyone links to the guy like he's an authority. |
| jimf Dec 19, 2006 6:39 PM EDT |
> Switched to SuSE and hadn't considered going back until recently. Still with SuSE after all the Novell BS, but not willing to try Debian after one FUD article by a know troll whiner? Now that's real logic dino. The current spat at Debian doesn't make Debian testing any less reliable or desireable to the end user. Don't let it turn you off to a good thing :) |
| swbrown Dec 19, 2006 6:42 PM EDT |
"Good to be reminded that Debian is a large community of equals, many of whom have goals more important than putting out a quality distribution." Debian is long term philosophy, not short term pragmatism. That's why it doesn't self-destruct as do the 'pragmatic' Linux distributions like Caldera OpenLinux and SuSE. |
| jimf Dec 19, 2006 6:47 PM EDT |
> goals more important than putting out a quality distribution Totally misleading. You know that the final release will be as or more reliable than any other Distro. Quality, reliability, and security has always been Debian's primary goal. |
| dinotrac Dec 19, 2006 7:08 PM EDT |
>Quality, reliability, and security has always been Debian's primary goal. No, those are it's secondary goals. Politics have always been its primary goal. |
| jimf Dec 19, 2006 7:43 PM EDT |
> No, those are it's secondary goals. Politics have always been its primary goal. On the contrary, Politics is the glue that holds it together ;-). |
| dinotrac Dec 19, 2006 8:11 PM EDT |
>On the contrary, Politics is the glue that holds it together ;-). Goal, glue, important stuff either way. If I were a Debian user, the etch delay would be a shoulder shrug to me. Big deal, nothing like the KDE pain of years back. As a potential Debian user, the reasons for the delay, if reported correctly, are a red flag. |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 19, 2006 10:32 PM EDT |
The Etch delay is only significant for people using Debian on production servers or desktops. I think pretty much anyone running Debian in a SOHO envirmonet is running testing, not stable. |
| swbrown Dec 19, 2006 11:46 PM EDT |
> As a potential Debian user, the reasons for the delay, if reported correctly, are a red flag. Why? These kinds of politics are going on constantly in Debian. Can you show how right now is a significantly worse period in its history? If not, why are you concerned? If their unparalleled level of transparency scares you, pretend they're any other software project and stop reading their dev lists and blogs. :) There's nothing really serious happening right now other than having to break the freeze to deal with the FireFox/Mozilla trademark issues. A lot of software links with them, so it creates a cascade effect of freeze-breaking, and since they need to go in together, Sid has to be held stable enough that it can happen. There are still large pieces of the suite that need migrated to testing, and then that all has to go through a release candidate and test to make sure the dummy packages for the upgrade path work. |
| swbrown Dec 19, 2006 11:48 PM EDT |
> I think pretty much anyone running Debian in a SOHO envirmonet is running testing, not stable. Hopefully not, as testing doesn't have security support yet. |
| dinotrac Dec 20, 2006 2:18 AM EDT |
>Why? These kinds of politics are going on constantly in Debian. Precisely my point, which is the original reason I left Debian. I don't want my computing held captive because Joe Developer from Dubuque has a philosophical objection to the way the developers of some key piece of software upon which I rely part their hair. |
| jimf Dec 20, 2006 2:31 AM EDT |
>I don't want my computing held captive because Joe Developer from Dubuque has a philosophical objection to the way the developers of some key piece of software upon which I rely part their hair. Like politics are exclusive to Debian. Given that attitude, I'm suprised you use Linux at all. |
| swbrown Dec 20, 2006 3:00 AM EDT |
"Precisely my point, which is the original reason I left Debian. I don't want my computing held captive because Joe Developer from Dubuque has a philosophical objection to the way the developers of some key piece of software upon which I rely part their hair." Seeing as this goes on behind closed doors with every software package in existence, what you're really saying is you feel more secure the less you know. So, simple solution - don't read Debian dev lists or blogs, or articles quoting from them. Then it's like Windows Vista - all smiles and sunshine even if a portal to hell has opened and the developers are fighting off Cacodemons with office supplies and hot coffee, as I'm assuming happened to Vista, seeing as it's now many years past due despite being 1/5th as many lines of code as Debian Sarge was. |
| dinotrac Dec 20, 2006 5:11 AM EDT |
>Seeing as this goes on behind closed doors with every software package in existence You are confusing apples and oranges. Distributions are not packages are not distributions. I choose my own software and, yes, if I don't trust the developers, I won't use the software. As to the actual nature of the politics, I couldn't less who believes in what -- unless it affects my ability to computer. Debian did that to me with KDE years ago and I've been wary of them since. |
| bigg Dec 20, 2006 6:55 AM EDT |
I think you use suse, but in my case I can always fall back on Debian Slow aka Ubuntu if I try Debian Etch and don't like it. There are a sufficient number of Debian-based distributions out there to provide a security blanket. If I used KDE I'd be running suse because it is by far the best distribution for running KDE IMO, if you can endure the package management. |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 20, 2006 7:02 AM EDT |
>> I think pretty much anyone running Debian in a SOHO envirmonet is running testing, not stable. > Hopefully not, as testing doesn't have security support yet. Not a problem. Security fixes are usually made to unstable and migrated to testing after two days. The same fix is then ported to stable. Testing may not have official security support, but it does get virtually all the patches. About the only time when it would not get a security patch is if the fix would wreck havok with an incoming upstream release know to have it fixed properly. |
| jdixon Dec 20, 2006 7:08 AM EDT |
> ... even if a portal to hell has opened and the developers are fighting off Cacodemons with office supplies and hot coffee, as I'm assuming happened to Vista... Well, in their case the demons are the management team, but otherwise essentially correct. |
| swbrown Dec 20, 2006 7:18 AM EDT |
> You are confusing apples and oranges. Distributions are not packages are not distributions. Any group of people trying to accomplish anything. I could have compared Debian to a McDonald's and internal squabbles about what temperature to serve coffee or how often to swap out the oil in the fry cooker or whether to use vegetable or animal oil or why employee A was passed over for promotion in favor of employee B. You'll still get your McRib. > As to the actual nature of the politics, I couldn't less who believes in what -- unless it affects my ability to computer. Debian did that to me with KDE years ago and I've been wary of them since. Did what? Seeing as KDE continues to work just fine in Debian, I'm assuming you mean back in the days of the QPL when KDE was built illegally on top of Qt and Debian wouldn't include it, because doing so would be illegal? I hope that isn't what you're referring to, as I can't believe you'd fault them for not committing massive copyright violation and risking being sued so you could use illegal software. |
| Abe Dec 20, 2006 7:21 AM EDT |
Quoting: Switched to SuSE and hadn't considered going back until recently.Dino: If Debian is not appealing, forget Debian and go with Kubuntu. I switched to PCLinuxOS/Kubuntu on desktop and Kubuntu on server. I can tell you they are much better than Suse at this time. I liked Suse and have used it for over 5 years. After Novell's deal with MS, I checked Kubuntu and I can tell you that Suse is looking more and more legacy in comparison. What do you have against Kubuntu? I am just curious. |
| azerthoth Dec 20, 2006 7:49 AM EDT |
I'm curious Dino, you say that political concerns over package maintenance are clouding your decision over giving debian another try. However in allowing policitcal dealings into the factors that assist you in choosing your distro of choice you have stayed with (Novesoft/Microvell) SUSE. I'm not knocking your choice, everyone can use the distro they choose. However with political considerations in place the question is just begging to be asked "Why have you stayed with SUSE?" |
| jimf Dec 20, 2006 7:51 AM EDT |
I don't mind that dino doesn't want to run Debian. It's certainly not for everyone. What does concern me is that he won't even give it a test drive. I did try a recent suse just to see how it compared... |
| dinotrac Dec 20, 2006 11:37 AM EDT |
>What does concern me is that he won't even give it a test drive.
>What do you have against Kubuntu? I am just curious. I have nothing against Kubuntu. For that matter, I have nothing against Debian other than the fact that silly politics severely inconvenienced me some years ago. The big problems I have right now are: 1. Inertia. I have Suse and I'm used to it. 2. Wife, three kids, and an old house. Takes a lot of play time. 3. Hobbies..... Nice to pick up the guitar, or make a video now and then. And don't even get me started on writing. I've let that fall so far behind that it kills me. 4. I don't have that many boxes. I replaced my gateway machine with a little wireless router, leaving just my workstation and my wife's. Screwing with my workstation risks major inconvenience, screwing with my wife's risks death. So... I'll change when I have a compelling reason, but, until then, I ain't likely to get around to it. And no, the Novell-Microsoft deal is not a compelling reason. As most of you know by now, I see it as a mole hill, not a mountain. So,I'm old guy who can't well keep up as it is. |
| jimf Dec 20, 2006 11:41 AM EDT |
> So,I'm old guy who can't well keep up as it is. Well, why didn't you say so... I can relate to that :D |
| jdixon Dec 20, 2006 11:50 AM EDT |
> I see it as a mole hill, not a mountain. You've obviously never almost broken your ankle tripping over a mole hill. They're far more trouble than you'd expect. :) I agree that it's not a good enough reason to switch, though I'd go with OpenSuSE rather than the commercial version for the next update, if you're not already using it. |
| tuxchick Dec 20, 2006 11:54 AM EDT |
Ah, I get it now. dino uses his computer for work. We all know the real purpose of owning a PC is to continually install new Linux distributions on it. But that's OK dino, we accept your eccentricity. |
| jdixon Dec 20, 2006 12:36 PM EDT |
> 4. I don't have that many boxes. Dino, that's where VMware Player comes in. If you've got the disk space and memory, you can run as many virtual machines as you want, all with different versions of Linux. Player is free, and as far as anyone can tell VMware doesn't care what you install on a blank machine. See http://wolphination.com/linux/2005/12/17/how-to-run-other-os... for a writeup. |
| Abe Dec 20, 2006 2:12 PM EDT |
Quoting:I don't have that many boxes.You should do what I do, I wait by the company's dumpster to salvage perfectly working PCs to take home. lol |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 20, 2006 3:15 PM EDT |
I usually don't even wait for the dumpster. Being in IT I have access to the storage room. If I fancy something I just ask my boss if I can take it. Usually I can. My latest prize: A 3Com 24-port switch. Perfect for running Cat5 through my next house! I'm now baiting for a soon-to-be-scapped ProLiant server to run Xen on. |
| dinotrac Dec 20, 2006 5:40 PM EDT |
>Ah, I get it now. dino uses his computer for work. Whatya gonna do? Real life intrudes. But it's not all that dreary - I do my video/audio editing there, too, not to mention a little gimping,etc., so it's not all nose to the grindstone. Just mostly. |
| swbrown Dec 20, 2006 5:44 PM EDT |
"I have nothing against Debian other than the fact that silly politics severely inconvenienced me some years ago." Please tell us what these 'silly politics' were. I get the feeling you're referring to when KDE was illegally using Qt and are blaming Debian for not helping you pirate software. That wasn't a 'silly politics' issue, that was a 'we will get sued' issue. |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 3:04 AM EDT |
swbrown - >I get the feeling you're referring to when KDE was illegally using Qt and are blaming Debian for not helping you pirate software. That wasn't a 'silly politics' issue, that was a 'we will get sued' issue. I get the feeling you should get your facts straight or go to work for the entertainment industry. 1. Who was pirating what? The issue was whether to provide KDE. The KDE and Qt licenses would permit that. Nobody was stealing from anybody. Nobody was trying to use software in a way that it's authors would object to. 2. Who was suing who? Nobody -- and I do mean absolutely nobody -- had threatened to sue anyone. Trolltech was not going to sue anybody -- they couldn't. The QPL gave Debian the right to distibute its stuff. The KDE team wasn't going to sue. They gave a specific license to distribute their stuff. The problem was that RMS decided that he would use an "incompatibility" between the QPL and GPL to create an issue that didn't exist. He claimed that qt could not be distributed with GPL'd software. FSF, I suppose, could have threatened to sue, but, if they did, it hasn't come to light. 3. So what? Debian already had a mechanism for distributing non-free software. They could have handled KDE that way until the "issues" were resolved. They didn't. |
| swbrown Dec 21, 2006 5:39 AM EDT |
> The QPL gave Debian the right to distibute its stuff. The KDE team wasn't going to sue. The licenses were incompatible. There was no legal way to distribute KDE, no matter how much you, or KDE, or TrollTech, wanted it to be true. KDE was illegal software. > Who was suing who? Nobody -- and I do mean absolutely nobody -- had threatened to sue anyone. So you should break the law today because you can and it's convenient, and in the future you.. what? Pray Microsoft doesn't buy TrollTech? Not much of a plan. :) > Debian already had a mechanism for distributing non-free software. They could have handled KDE that way until the "issues" were resolved. They didn't. Debian DOES NOT have a mechanism to distribute software that violates licenses, period. They could have provided Qt in non-free under the QPL (I think they did if I remember right), but not KDE, as you couldn't even legally distribute KDE in non-free. There was simply no other choice but to not distribute KDE until a license change with TrollTech or KDE could be negotiated. You are faulting Debian for not acting illegally on your behalf, which is a rather unethical position to take. |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 6:17 AM EDT |
swbrown - Debian didn't find another choice because they didn't want to. They did not have to break any laws or violate any licenses to distribute KDE. If they were concerned, a solution was as simple as providing a separate kde branch on their ftp site. They just didn't care. |
| swbrown Dec 21, 2006 8:18 AM EDT |
> Debian didn't find another choice because they didn't want to. Oh come on now, let's not do the alternate reality thing. Debian was highly and /directly/ involved in the license talks with TrollTech. They wanted the issue fixed and worked very hard to fix it. They helped save your KDE. > They did not have to break any laws or violate any licenses to distribute KDE What part of "it couldn't be legally redistributed" did you not understand? Or do you have a theory where the GPL incompatibility of the very incompatible QPL was not actually incompatible, which goes against the professional evaluations of lawyers from the FSF, RedHat, and Debian, and common sense (read the thing, it didn't even pretend to be GPL compatible)? Seriously, you need to read this and get some clue as you're in a totally other dimension on this: http://themes.freshmeat.net/articles/view/167/ |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 8:30 AM EDT |
>They wanted the issue fixed and worked very hard to fix it. They wanted the issue fixed on their terms. It was all about the politics and users be damned in the meantime. |
| azerthoth Dec 21, 2006 11:08 AM EDT |
Can someone declare this a dead horse and stop whipping it? Truly its a non-issue, KDE is legal under the GPL now and has been for some time. dinotrac has made his position of not caring about the legal aspects of the previous issue very clear "legal be damned I want what I want". Many of the rest of us on the face of it support the decision debian made while still being sympathetic to dino's opinion. We tend to ignore odds and ends that dont match up with the way we see the world, libdvdcss for example or w32codecs. Its a given that there have been issues and that there will be again. Right now Novell and SUSE are the pariah of the linux community, violating the spirit of the GPL while not in fact breaking it. That may change and give us something else to get whipped up over, I hope so. I dont mean to flame dinotrac for his opinions, he has a bad taste over debian because of the KDE debacle. OK fine, but what is going to happen when SUSE is forced to fork? It cant meet the requirements of GPL3 and a bunch of the packages and applications that are the backbone of linux (samba for example) have already declared for GPL3. Legally SUSE will have no choice but to fork which means that they and not the authors will have to take over maintenance of the code for their version of ... oh KDE for example. They will be legally restricted from using any of the GPL3 released code which means no more updates and no more bug fixes unless Novell themselves do it. By all means keep using what you want for what ever reason you want. However you need to understand the legal end of it, because if you also want to keep using SUSE your going to have to start making some really big sacrifices in the very near future. You'll probably complain about it, but you wont have a leg to stand on because legally there will be no choice in the matter. |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 11:46 AM EDT |
>Can someone declare this a dead horse and stop whipping it? It is a dead horse and shame on me for climbing up upon it. I should have let it go, as I mentioned it only as the reason I stopped using Debian. Truth is, it doesn't matter whether I am right or dead wrong. |
| tuxchick Dec 21, 2006 11:53 AM EDT |
hey hey hey- that's enough talk of dead horses. Leave the nice horses alone! |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 1:41 PM EDT |
>hey hey hey- that's enough talk of dead horses. Leave the nice horses alone! Sorry...How about a dead stinkweed? |
| tuxchick Dec 21, 2006 1:51 PM EDT |
Sheesh, picking on Darl is getting old, too. :D |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 2:06 PM EDT |
>Sheesh, picking on Darl is getting old, too. Good point. |
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