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Social Contract Amendment May Bump Sarge To 2005
An anonymous reader submits "Debian's Release Manager Anthony Towns announced that after the Grand Resolution to amend the Social Contract has been successful (it does not only apply to software any more), vital parts to modern Linux systems, such as important documentation, firmware needed for proper hardware support will have to be removed from the distribution before the next release. Moreover, the upcoming installer will need to be changed. He goes on to say that he does not expect this to happen by the end of this year which means that Sarge will not be released in 2004."
i use and like debian. but i want new packages to be released, and for it to generally appear to be supported.
if you dont want non-free stuff, fine, release sarge, its almost ready (and long delayed) and make removal of non free packages a goal of the next release.
I think that the Debian people are right on this one , however the FSF foundation is partly to blame because of the invariant sections in the FDL . (why glibc wont have documentation)
I think the solution, since non-free is being kept, should be to include the non-free repositories in the default "sources.list" file and allow tasksel to use non-free packages for documentation under a "Non-Free documentation" header, no non-free stuff should needed for the bootstrap installation(although binary kernel module won't be available by default). Thats the best comprimise, IMHO.
Could we stop the Microsoft, Debian, Gentoo and Fedora, and *BSD astroturfing please?
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
Businesses use Redhat because they offer commerical support, something I don't believe Debian offers, as Debian is not a commercial enterprise.
I certainly see your point that for some popular devices (e.g. nVidia cards), the proprietary drivers are much better than the open ones. I also agree that going the moral road will turn away some users.
/etc, /dev, and /proc are set up just right.
However, Debian is imho big enough to pull this sort of thing. If some micro-league, half-assed distro went this route, it would die in obscurity, but a major product like Debian will survive. Furthermore, by rejecting proprietary firmware and documentation, Debian is raising awareness of some important issues (like Fedora not including mp3 support raises awareness of patent encumbered technologies).
Say you get a shiny new pci card with a little tux on the box, and a proprietary driver on the CD. Cool, huh? No. Not cool. The driver will work with your Linux system provided:
-you use kernel 2.4 or maybe 2.6
-you compiled said kernel with gcc 3.2 or 3.3
-you use glibc 2.somethingorother
-your
Years pass. Linux gains 20% desktop market share. Duke Nukem Forever is released for Mac and Lintel. You fish out an old computer from your closet; you want to install a Linux (kernel 3.0; compiled with gcc 3.5; with glibc 2.somethingelse; and a GNU/Darwin directory layout) to turn into a streaming virtual reality server for your apartment. Guess what's the probability of your closed-source driver still working?
Open source drivers might be a hassle to use in the short term, but C source is still the most portable way to distribute software.
It is true that the "apt" part of debian -- a modular packaging system with dependencies that are carefully expressed and automatically installed -- is a beautiful thing, and that other distros have similar tools.
However, even just looking at the practical (rather that philosophical) side, apt is not the best part of Debian.
The best part of Debian is a set of packaging conventions (the Debian Policy Manual), and a set of tools and a QA system to support that system, with the result that the software you use from Debian is consistently well-integrated, even though it is crafted by a distributed group of volunteers.
The social norms and continual build-up and exposition of best practices, expressed in part by the Debian Policy Manual, is really the best practical characteristic of Debian.
The freedom thing (and corresponding attention to software licensing) is nice, too.
It's going to be hard to say this without people getting their panties in a knot, but I absolutely hate trying to 1) get debian systems running how I want and 2) keep them running how I want.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like if some of the Debian folk spent as much time fixing their distribution as they do ranting about the philosophy behind their system, it could just about literally jump into my computer, read my mind, and magically do everything I wanted without me touching a keyboard. As it is though, I'm forever saying to myself "now where the hell did they put THAT file, since it's not in its standard location..." and "what version is this package really? It looks like version 3.1 from 2 years ago.... no wait, that's 3.1-15... wtf is the -15? It has features that weren't released until 3.9? Huh?!??" and similar.
I once made the mistake of trying to figure out what flags were being used to compile a Debian package... after jumping around through about 7 different intertwined and slightly obfuscated shell scripts for about an hour, I gave up.
Unfortunately, I'm still stuck using Debian on one server (the owner doesn't want to change OSs), but I've gone to Slackware on all my systems. Much simpler system to deal with overall, IMNSHO.