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Debian Project Votes To Postpone Policy Changes
jonoxer writes "A little while ago members of the Debian project voted to make changes to the Social Contract. As previously reported on Slashdot, the end result looked likely to be a delay in the release of Sarge, the next Stable edition of Debian, until 2005. But on Saturday Debian developers voted to postpone the changes until after Sarge releases, effectively affirming that the changes need to be made but making a pragmatic decision to not let the next release be delayed as a result. The official voting page doesn't show the result yet, but it's been semi-officially announced."
They are so far out of whack with reality, what's another year? who cares?
What they NEED to do is strip down the core distribution and produce major updates faster.
That debian is still widely used despite being in the stone age is a testimony to all the things they are doing right.. now they just NEED to get releases under control.
Debian is probably the best/most stable GNU/Linux available, and if a sarge ver can accomodate the world--the better we are for it. as a redhatian, turned debianite...I'd say we are on the verge of a major breakthrough...
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
When I heard that a policy change might delay the new release until next year, I was really bummed. That's my one big debian problem--the politcs seem to gum up the works all too frequently. I'm glad to see that this will be put aside until the very much needed next release. YAY DEBIAN!
On a side note, anyone ever take an up-to-date testing machine and convert it to stable at release time? Did it, uh, work?
Debian is something different from most other Linux distributions - it is the absolute high ground, the place which could withstand a legal flood that would wash away any other distribution in existance. That is its function, in my view. There is Redhat/Fedora for pragmatic server use, Mandrake for latest and greatest and friendliest. Debian is adhering to a PRINCIPLE.
Most of us don't like adhering to principles - it really sucks because you have to give up things. In this case you give up convenience and non-free software being hidden safely in the background. For many people that price is too high. That's fine - use another distro! There are others who cater to that. Anyone using Debian has no business objecting to that philosophy - it is the primary reason Debian exists. People not contributing it have no voice at all, nor should they expect one. Think they're dumb for not being pragmatic? Guess how much that matters.
Debian is what happens when you take potential legal problems to heart and try to do what it takes to avoid them. I rather suspect that Debian ultimately wants there to be ZERO chance of any successful lawsuit about anything in the distribution, although I don't know if that is an explicit policy. That's hard, in our society. (What they probably REALLY want is no chance of a lawsuit being brought against them period, but the laws of the US at least don't allow that.)
Debian is about Freedom first, and software second. I see no problem with them releasing and then implimenting the policy changes, since there is not likely to be any increased risk compared to their current release. But if I'm wrong for whatever reason, they should ignore all critics and take whatever time they need to Do It Right. That is done too little nowadays, particularly in Free Software where theoretically Doing It Right is the motivation.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Not everybody wants a candy coated desktop anyway.
If I had to pick one great failing in the business world, it'd be "too many irons in the fire". Many a company has tried to sell you everything and anything- and thusfar, the only company to do it successfully has been Walmart, and that's at least partially from stepping on their workers like they're dirt, but that's another story for another time.
Debian excels at being reliable and "serious". I don't use it because, unfortunately, it's not even -remotely- close to current; it's about two weeks shy of two years old. However, it is serving a specific market, and it should not pander to trying to please everyone. Mandrake is worse, in my opinion- they still want to be everything from your desktop to your server; they excel in the desktop arena, and that is where they should focus for the same reason.
Do one thing, do it well- and never have to worry about pleasing everyone, having conflicting goals, etc. You'll never have to say, "well, this configuration system will never be understood by new linux users!"- because your market is experienced linux users who will appreciate extra functionality (by the way, this is a mythical example).
I've never used Debian, but understand the advantages and have a few friends who prefer it. I like and use Mandrake on desktop systems I have to use regularly; my personal "servers" get Gentoo. Redhat is what I use for business/enterprise stuff.
Please help metamoderate.
Aren't longer release cycles better for production enviroments? If you have 500 servers do you really want to update every month (except for critical bug fixes which you can get by putting apt-get in a crontab)?
Unstable does NOT mean it will crash, not at all.. unstable means the layout and dependencies are not stable, and prone to change from update to update.
I cannot afford to run an update and have dependencies break partway through.
As a workstation, I would not hesitate to run unstable, not at all.. as such quirks can be easily dealt with.
Yes, I can test on another machine.... but that can be difficult in practice.. a certian level of stability of updates is needed.
Fixing things by hand is very difficult..
Yes i am perfectly capable of building from source, or using another package format... or using backports from somewhere else for updated packages.. but that defeats a large part of hte purpose for running debian.
My number was hyperbole, but people think Debian is behind the times because the last "stable" release, Woody, came out in 2002. A lot has happened in the Linux community since then (Woody came out when Linux kernel v.2.2 was still all the rage). However, they neglect to realize that you use the stable branch if you want a rock-solid platform, not a platform with the latest software versions.
For everything else, you should use the unstable branch, not stable. Unstable tends to have releases all the way up to the day the source was released for most packages.
Software is... software. Its not a cure for some social ills, its purpose is defined by the usability it brings to people.
And free software brings more usability to people by being free.
In any case, everything is just itself. Cotton is just cotton, whether it's grown by slaves or free farmers on their own farm. That doesn't mean that what we use and how we choose it doesn't have consequences.
I would say they are remarkably similar. The two biggest differences seem to be that Gentoo is source based and only seems to have one main subdistribution. Debian is binary based although any package can be recompiled from source pretty easily. Debian Unstable and Gentoo would give you the best apples-to-apples comparison. I'm not a Gentoo user so I can't advise you there. I will point out that the following source list for Debian's apt tool will get you easy access to fully compiled packages of mplayer and the w32codecs:
.// sid ./
/etc/apt/sources.list:
/etc/mozpluggerrc and comment out all the lines that handle video MIME types. The mplayer plugin does a better job. You want have all of this installed before running the Mozilla or Firefox for the first time for maximum painlessness.
/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf and set vo=xv. This will enable hardware scaling for watching videos. Leave everything else in there alone.
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free
# Blackdown java port
deb http://www.tux.org/pub/java/debian sid non-free
# Cinelerra/Media Players
deb http://lpnotfr.free.fr/debian
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main
deb http://www.kiberpipa.org/~minmax/cinelerra/builds
Once your desktop is configured to taste, I think the following will do what you want with the preceding in your
apt-get install mplayer-586 mplayer-mozilla w32codecs mozplugger acroread timidity mikmod sox j2re1.4 flashplugin-nonfree
If you want Shockwave as well, you'll have to pony up for a copy of Crossover Wine.
That gets the software to playback most anything and the ability to do it within a browser as well. Watching trailers on apple.com even works well.
Tuning:
mozplugger and the mplayer plugin are redundant in the video department. It won't hurt anything to skip this step but I do it anyway. Edit
Assuming you have a well supported video card (Nvidia and Matrox work well from personal experience), edit
Debian unstable (Sid) is not absolutely fine for desktop use. Unstable does break. Recently Samba and parts of KDE could not coexist due to print library dependancies. This is not acceptable for computers that are used for work.
Debian stable is ancient. There have been some nice software updates in the past two years. Using backports.org is a solution, but has its own problems. The quality of backports is not garanteed to be as good as Debian proper. More importantly security updates are garanteed to be released promptly.
Just because unstable is acceptable for your use, does not make it acceptable for the rest of us.
Well, it's obvious that you disagree fundementally and irreconcilably with the Debian developers. To them, software *isn't* just software, but critical infrastructure in a modern society that is increasingly dependent on computers. When a tool becomes so pervasive that there are serious social ramifications involved in doing without it (consider, for example, disadvantaged children who cannot afford computers), then it becomes something a bit more than an ordinary tool.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yes, they are. I find it more than a bit ironic that RedHat has been praised (by some...) for their new strategy of "charge 'em more, release less often" while Debian gets slammed for not releasing a new version every six months.
IMHO, Debian's dependency management is so good that it's worth dealing with older packages to get a "stable" version that runs like a top.
Debian is also good at keeping the initial number of packages installed small, which is good for keeping things simple--especially important for servers. It is very easy to install a bare bones stable installation and then add to it using aptitude and perhaps tasksel).
I'd rather like to see Sarge with the new policy enabled, even if it takes two more years or four. (I am young, I can wait.)
I mean, Debian is FREE, and so should be its documentation.
Let's not forget that the freedom in documentation that you want is more than many, including myself, would consider appropriate.
To be 100% DFSG-defined free, some have argued in debian-devel and debian-legal you should be able to edit, and redistribute your edits of any documentation.
Sounds ok when you first think of it, which is probably why the general resolution that proposed that changed passed. But then you realize that:
1) the docs include standards, like RFCs, which _should not_ be changed and redistributed, less confusion ensue. There is a formal process for contribution and review, but just editing the docs isn't it.
2) the docs include license texts, like the GPL, APL, etc. The condition of using and redistributing most of the code in debian/main, including such useful things as the kernel, glibc, gcc, g, is that the text of GPL be distributed along with it. However, the GPL text itself isn't 100% free from the DFSG's point of view because it once again cannot be altered and redistributed as the GPL. And bingo, you're stuck! The GPL can't be put into non-free, because is presence is mandatory, but good luck in having the FSF alter their license.
I have nothing against a free _software_ interpretation of the DFSG, but there are good practical reasons why the same freedoms cannot be applied to the documentation.
----------seperate point for discussion-----------
Interesting thing - wait much more than 6-12 months for Sarge, and most serious debian installs will be running production systems with a heavy concentration of backports.
And with backports, there are less eyes on the package's code level, and less eyes to notice that an update may have been released to plug some security problems. But there's the trap: (1) use testing and have a too volatile OS, (2) use stable + backports and get a functional os, that's generally secure, or (3) use just stable and get an OS that in time loses the ability to deliver 'standard' features, i.e. functions that have been available for more than a year.
Gentoo is becoming the system of choice for those who like to develop, test, and play, while Debian is for those who just want to set up a stable box and forget about it. Of course there certainly are people who still use Debian to develop just as there are those who use Gentoo for servers, but each distro seems to be heading towards those two niches. Debian tried and true, Gentoo bleeding edge and new. Both distros are very important to the open source community.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Are the upstream packages too broken to be good enough for debian?
Usually. Take a look at all the bugfixes that Debian applies to the packages (just look at bugreports from each package).
Has debian deviated so far from mainstream that the packages require extensive customization?
Not really. Upstream authors just don't really pay tons of attention to detail, and so while a release might work fine on their heavily customized system, it doesn't play well nice with the standards that Linux Standards Base and Debian Policy have defined.
Why can't the fixes be committed directly to upstream?
Sometimes they are - Debian package maintainers do a ton of backporting. Take, for instance, the Intel driver in XFree86 - for the longest time, it was improperly supported in X, and so the newest 855 (I think) couldn't run. You could fix it by going to a CVS update (4.3.99) but there were no releases of XFree86 that actually had this fix.
This is stupid, so Debian fixed it - the 855 driver change got backported to the version that Debian has, and Debian's version works.
A lot of people don't realize this, and so they think that "oh, I can't use Debian because certain packages are very old and contain many bugs" - that's not true. Lots of bugs are backported to packages. It's just that upstream authors many times change much, much more than just a simple bugfix, and to introduce all of those changes at once would, and does, break systems.
The other simple reason is that Debian supports more architectures, by far, than any other distribution, and it takes a large amount of time to verify all those architectures.
(Many people would say "who cares, I only use x86", and that's nice - but we need to have a distribution like Debian!)
It's also important to remember that Debian acts as a very solid "base" for operating systems. You can build on it very, very well, and many companies do! Knoppix is quite amazing (and is Debian, repackaged). Lindows/Linspire, Xandros, Libranet, etc. are all Debian-based operating systems, and the number really keeps growing. Those distributions don't stay out of date because they don't have the same concerns Debian does, and so if you're really a version-number whore, go with them.