Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Progeny Debian Is No More

Posted by timothy on from the cryin'-shame dept.

Nickus writes: "According to this announcement on the Progeny homepage, development of their Progeny Debian has stopped and will no longer be available for sale after 15th of October. They will provide a migration path to the next release of Debian though."

6 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Libranet is cutting back as well by mkelley · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-10 -03-015-20-NW-DB

    --

    m.kelley
    life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
  2. product, not company by SirEdward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you finish reading the article, you'll notice that they are simply no longer developing an alternative Debian distribution and will, instead, contribute their changes directly to the official Debian distribution. From the annoncement:

    "From a business perspective, our customers consistently ask for Debian, not Progeny Debian, and while Progeny Debian is technically just a "release" of Debian (akin to "potato" or "woody" from the Debian project), the appearance of maintaining a separate or "forked" version is a liability given our company's shift away from a mass-market product and service focus and toward consulting and other professional services.

    Progeny will continue to help further the development and adoption of Debian in commercial settings, and we will continue to contribute enhancements to Debian that help Debian become a more viable platform for commercial users. This announcement only affects Progeny Debian the product; it in no way affects Progeny's ongoing commitment to the Debian project or its Debian deployment, custom development, and support services for commercial users."

    1. Re:product, not company by DeadPrez · · Score: 2, Informative

      As far as I know, "vanilla" debian (and I can only assume this means potato) doesn't have most of those programs and the ones it does have are probably at least one major revision behind.

      Installing potato *does* hurt in the sense that a large number of the apps are outdated (often time very severely) but in trade you get stability and security. Of course, you can always upgrade to testing (Woody) or unstable (Cid) but both are usually broken in such a way a *normal* user couldn't fix. That bums me out.

      Debian, IMO, is dying for Woody to become stable. Until that happens, all the chest beating about how far linux and programs designed for linux have come will fall on deaf ears to the no/low risk Debian user and everyone else will be installing Red Hat. =(

      Of course, the Debian community is doing the best the can, I just wanted to point out that "vanilla" Debian is a distro over 6 months old and really isn't a good choice for the programs you described unless you install them manually (which defeats the whole purpose of installing debian anyway!)

  3. Read the damn anouncement. by Zapdos · · Score: 5, Informative

    For all you id10ts out there they are not closing shop. They are merging with debian proper.

    This announcement only affects Progeny Debian the product; it in no way affects Progeny's ongoing commitment to the Debian project or its Debian deployment, custom development, and support services for commercial users.

    --
    Get a free ipod.
  4. Re:woody almost done? by apathy21 · · Score: 1, Informative

    Woody has been frozen for a while now...it'll probably be released as stable quite soon.

  5. Read their Press Release! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    They put it in pretty plain terms:

    * their work has been integrated back into
    mainstream Debian

    * their customers wanted Debian

    * their business focus is shifting towards
    consulting and professional services

    ... this isn't the "death of Progeny." It's the
    fruition of their work in a branch of development.

    (Branching is different from "forking" in that
    the intent is usually to merge/re-integrate
    at some later point).