Ian Murdock On 'Pure' Vs. 'Commercial' Debian

Netsnipe writes: "Shortly after the release of Progeny Debian Beta 1, I wrote an article on DebianPlanet called "Blurring the Line Between Pure Debian and its Commercial Variants" questioning the standing of commercial variants of Debian among the many purists to Debian's non-commercial principles who would find it hard-pressed to stray from mainstream Debian. The article's accompanying poll illustrated that an overwhelming 58% of respondents would not use a commercial variant of Debian as opposed to 32% who would. Ian Murdock, a former founding member of Debian GNU/Linux and now the founder and CEO of Progeny Linux Systems has written an interesting reply to my article where he defends Progeny despite its commercial leanings and explains how he feels it stands within the Debian scene. "

Comments

random thoughts

[ebola-zaire]

i too have mixed feelings on the progeny debian beta. i am currently a debian user and considered trying progeny's distro, but decided there were not that many features that i would benifit from. i think though that progeny will probably be very sucessful because they will have the power of the debian community, vast amount of packaged software, and the far superior packaging system.

i only fear that progeny has come into the game a little late. i will talk a little about some of the good things progeny will bring to debian. first and foremost they will remove some of the mystisism about using debian. many new linux user's don't use debian due to the more archaic installer, and also because the documentation is harder to come by. progeny will sport an easier install and better hardware detection, which will inturn attract more users. progeny will also provide the latest software from woody, but in a stable form. i imagine the selection of software will probably be similar to the current, but little known, testing version of debian. having the newer software that redhat, mandrake, and other distributions have released will increase interest from users of other distro's that previously would not use debian due to the thought that it is out of date.

what interest me most about progeny though is their linux now (network of worskstations) project. linux now will be a highly scalable implemenation for managing distributed computing enviroments. it will be an out of the box solution for easier system administration. it does this by creating the appearance of a single computer which will actually consist of many. this gives a consist look and feel to both the end user and the administrators. it is supposed to be simple, and highly configurable. something one doesn't often find in the same piece of software... the neatest feature though will be the ability to use process migration to minimize lost cpu cycles, and provide more cpu power.

i am not ready to make the switch to progeny yet, but i will definately keep my eyes open.

So?

[Verteiron]

Not to be flamebait, but what's the big deal? One of the nice things about open-source operating systems is if you don't like one version, you can use a different one. No matter what happens, some people are going to use the commercial version, and some aren't; that's a given.

Overwhelming majority?

[gattaca]

If I polled the CD buying community and asked how many would be prepared to buy the next Britney Spears Album and 32% said 'yes', I'd think she was doing pretty well. I think I might even buy stocks in her record company.

If 32% of people, used to getting something for free, say they are prepared to spend cash on a commercial variant, then doesn't that sounds like good news for the companies involved?

Whether that's good for Open Source, Unix etc.. is a different question, which, I think, might have been discussed sometime before on Slashdot. :-)

As someone who spends an unhealthy amount of time infront of my computer, anybody who can help make that experience more enjoyable for me is going to be my friend - I might even ask my company to pay them for it....