Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Interview with Ian Jackson

Posted by timothy on from the judge-jackson dept.

Figuring you can never get too much Ian Jackson, Trevelyan writes: "Debian Planet has an interview with the long time Debian maintainer, and a former DPL, a current member of the technical committee and the author of dpkg. Also announced Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r7 released. In case some of you thought Debian won't be releasing anything this year =)"

4 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Ian Jackson and the Holy Grail... by tlambert · · Score: 5, Funny
    When I first joined the project, dpkg was a very evil shell script that was little more than a placeholder.
    Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp.
    "I wrote dpkg v2, a Perl script, because it was the thing that needed writing next."
    So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.
    "The current C dpkg is actually the third dpkg. I think there may have been parts of the Perl one that were done by someone else, but I basically wrote the Perl version, and wrote all of the C version."
    So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp
    "Around the introduction of the C version, the format was changed from the old `two lines of text and two gzipped tarfiles'. I wanted something more extensible, with room for some additional out-of-band metadata. I also wanted something you didn't need Debian-specific tools to unpack."
    but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.

    -- Terry
  2. Re:Debian doesn't really stand a chance anymore by lordsutch · · Score: 2, Funny
    There's a reason they're [OpenBSD] going on 5 years without a remote hack.
    Funny, wasn't OpenBSD about the only Unix that turned out to be vulnerable to the OpenSSH hole in its "out of the box" configuration? Then again, I guess being an AC means you get to make shit up with no accountability...
    --
    My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
  3. You can never have... by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 3, Funny
    Figuring you can never get too much Ian Jackson

    Grins. That was not exactly my experience. I used to work with him whilst he was doing a summer job before he went to Cambridge. He didn't actually get fired or have to resign; but let's just say that at the time he was rather more interested in security than the system administrators would wish perhaps...

    Anyway he matured loads at Cambridge; must have done, cos he's still alive ;-)

    Bloody smart guy.

    --

    -WolfWithoutAClause

    "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
  4. Re:Debian is awesome. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    Debian can compete with OpenBSD directly in the realm of security
    Indeed, since they both run OpenSSH, they're both vulnerable to exactly the same remote root exploits.