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Talking With Debian's Branden Robinson
v.ciaglia writes to tell us that TuxJournal has a great interview with Branden Robinson, one of the Debian maintainers. The article has a nice mix of personal and Debian specific questions. From the interview: "My primary focus as Debian Project Leader has been to try to resolve some long-standing infrastructural issues that have been frustrating our developers and users. My emphasis has been on internal processes because, as I said above, I think we need to be prepared for more growth. I am very happy to speak at conferences and with the press about Debian, but fundamentally I think Debian sells itself. Because of that, I want to make sure that we're "ready to ship" -- ready to meet the demands of our users."
We love you, Debian, we do.
Haha! Two comments and already the server is not responding. They must be running Debian on that thing, *LOL*
(yes, I'm kidding)
That's nice and all, but that's not very "rock'n'roll" if you know what I mean. We already have Ubuntu - Ubuntu is debian done right. So, thank you and all, but no thank you. We've already swithced to Ubuntu.
1) Hi Branden, thank you for your availability. Can you tell us something about you? How are you? What's your work? What do you do in your life and your sparetime? What are your hobbies?
Well, let's see. I'm 30 years old, married, have no children, and live inIndianapolis, Indiana. I work for Progeny Linux Systems, the company co-founded by Debian founder Ian Murdock. I don't have much spare time, but for hobbies I enjoy playing the electric guitar, reading (overwhelmingly non-fiction), and playing Dungeons & Dragons, a hobby I had neglected for about 9 years.
2) Everybody know that you're the actual Debian GNU/Linux mantainer, one of most famous and used secure operating system nowaday. What's its philosophy?
Well, to correct you a little bit, the Debian Project has *many* maintainers, of which I am only one. We have approximately a thousand fully-fledged developers with voting privileges under our Constitution, and dozens more in the "new maintainer queue". On top of that, we see many contributions from our users and from other developers in the Free Software community. Debian GNU/Linux, like all GNU/Linux distributions, is the product of a massive cooperative effort.
In my view, the essential mission of the Debian Project is to produce the best Free Software operating system that we can. We not only want to produce a high-quality system; we also consider it necessary to preserve, for ourselves and for our users alike, the freedoms that enabled us to achieve that quality in the first place, and which will permit us to improve the system even further.
3) Why a person could move to Debian? What are the advantages? What could he do with Debain? And what he couldn't in place of other GNU/Linux distributions?
I think a person would move to Debian because they want to enjoy power over their computing experience. Every package in the Debian GNU/Linux system has source code available so that a user with adequate knowledge can customize the operation of the computer to suit individual tastes. This power comes not just from the free licensing of the system components, which most other GNU/Linux distributions approximate, but also from the existence of our very large and vibrant user and developer communities. One characteristic that sets us apart is that we are self-organizing and democratic; that means that any person can join up and become a guiding force in our society.
I did so myself, joining the Project in early 1998. I didn't even consider back then that I could or would rise to a leadership position; I simply did the best work I could, engaged with my fellow developers, and learned over time how to contribute in increasingly better ways.
Debian has no so-called "benevolent dictator", nor do we exist merely at the sufferance of a corporate entity. Debian is no longer unique in these respects; over the past couple of years we've seen other GNU/Linux distributions organize themselves along similar principles. I'd like to think this is because Debian has been demonstrating the value of this organizational approach for 12 straight years.
4) In the early June you released Debian 3.1 version, can you tell us what are the main advantages in?
There's a press release announcing Debian 3.1 on our website. I can't do much better than that in singing its praises. I find the culmination of the long-running debian-installer project to be especially satisfying. Our previous installer technology was kind of a hack. D-I (as it's called) has a proper design and is highly modular.
5) What do you think made Debain this successful?
I think Debian's success stems from its dual commitments to userempowerment through free licensing of the works we distribute, and to high quality through careful design and integration decisions. Not everyone is a software freedom fighter, nor is everyone a software perfectionist - but we can accommodate both of those passions pretty well. Debian is an
and that comment is based on what assumption??
The interview could have been edited by someone who had english as there first language. The interview questions were very badly worded. And I don't find this interview very helpful in regards to debian information. What merits a slashdot front page story? Slow news day? Come on guys! We can do better then this.
Charles
why plan for "future growth" if the markets and stastics show you aren't going to grow
I can not fathom the lack of logic in that statement.
If you don't plan to grow, you won't, regardless of markets and statistics. Based on your logic, if a college football team is ranked at the bottom of a poll before the season starts they should forfeit every game.
<sarcasm>Brilliant...</sarcasm>
This sig rocks the casbah.
It seems that nowadays no discussion of Debian is complete without mentioning Ubuntu. I'm very much impressed with what Ubuntu has accomplished. It really is a great distro. But Ubuntu would be nowhere without Debian. I would have liked to hear his thoughts on Ubuntu. Does it's existence help or hinder Debian? I have heard elsewhere that Ubuntu and Debian do work together on some issues, and that it has been positive for both distros. Still, I would have liked to hear whether he considers Ubuntu a good thing, and what his experiences have been in dealing with that team.
I'm simply saying I believe their resources would be better used elsewhere.
LINUX ONLINE POKER: Linux Poker
Because not to plan for "future growth" means giving up, shutting down your ftp servers, and begging your parents to let you live in their basement for minimal rent.
I don't think Debian is ready to give up yet, especially in light of the increasing popularity of its spinoff distros.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This is among the worst interviews I've ever read. First, the interviewer apparently used to work for slashdot (I know he's Italian, but he spelled Debian "Debain" more than once...give me a break). Second, this guy Branden Robinson, while obviously a great maintainer, is not a great interviewee. When he isn't sounding stiff and boring, he's busy sounding like an RMS clone ("we don't exist merely at the sufferance of a corporate entity" *puke*). My advice: don't waste your time with this article. If you manage to actually read the thing, you'll be disappointed (unless you actually give a crap how many hours Branden Robinson codes each day, and how many years it's been since he last played D&D).
-Michael
*cough* Ubuntu IS debian, every 6 months again, over and over and over... ;)
I mean, I don't wanna sound like a jerk, but where else do you put your resources other than growing and develping the distro?
This sig rocks the casbah.
If you want to list all the services that are currently running you still have to write a damn shell script yourself to go poking through the /etc/rc*.d! What a pain compared to a simple "chkconfig --list".
Also not to sound like a troll, but my god does the mention of Debian bore me half to death. Even more so when it's an "interview with somebody" related to Debian. Even more so when it's about "infrastructure issues".
Wow, nice troll.
Too bad Ubuntu gets its software from Debian. So in effect, Ubuntu is causing the most growth for Debian.
Nothing to see here
I am no marketing guru (far from it: I'm an Engineering Student!), but I don't think that letting the product sell itself is necessarily the best idea. Especially for a product like Debian which isn't the latest flashy-eye-candy-fuzzy-character toy for the Christmas season...
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
Both distros have their uses. Here are some examples: - kubuntu : for my 10 year old cousin who likes flashy things - ubuntu : for my sister who needs a stable office desktop - debian testing : for whenever I feel like developing a kernel module - debian stable : for whenever I need a server that wont crash Different users have different needs.
You spelled "braggadocious" incorrectly. Also, arrogance is defined as boastfulness where braggadocio is defined as excessive arrogance, so I guess that means you are braggadocious - not because you are right, but rather because you use the word without knowing what it means. I hope you intended your sig to be as ironically funny as it is!
TFA doesn't make any mention of control groups, or soda groups, or decaf groups....
Shall we assume that this study was paid for by the CIA (Coffee-Importers of America)?
Personally, I get headaches that can sometimes be described as migraines if I have caffiene one day, and not the next, so I guess it's a good thing I hardly ever drink the spirits....
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
A college football team is always aiming to win the league. Debian IIRC has repeatedly stated they are not trying to become the OS everyone uses, just to make a good OS for the people who make it to use, and make it freely available for anyone who wants to use/improve it. So they don't need to plan to grow because growing isn't an important objective for them.
I am trolling
The user base is growing because of distros like ubuntu. If their objective is to make the OS freely avaliable to anyone then growing becomes an objective by proxy. PS: An operating system is different from a football team...
I wonder if that's now a clause in his interview contracts: :-P
I will not talk about Ubuntu.
Do not ask me about Ubuntu.
If you force me to listen to a question about Ubuntu I will stick my fingers in my ears like this and go "LaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa!"
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
i finally installed ubuntu this weekend. i had always been a mandrake fan, and also have used fedora some, but neither would recognize my belkin f5d6001 (admtek chipset) wireless pci card, or would configure it. also, couldn't get a linksys wusb11 (usb wifi) to work either. spare me the howto's. a modern distro should just do it. period. ubuntu did the belkin perfect, never tried the linksys. all i had to do was configure the wep key and viola. then, to install php, mysql, apache, etc. ap-get install whatever or use synaptic. holy freakin cow!!! i installed ubuntu and kubuntu, so i have latest gnome AND kde. how does ubuntu get it so right? i will never use another distro again.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Indeed, apt is very handy :)
Not debian, but python zealot. Hence I love it when people write about it.
7) What are your favourite programming languages? Why do you use them?
I personally prefer to use Python and POSIX-compatible shell. I use Python because I find it fits in pretty well with how I think about solving problems. I use the shell because it's available nearly everywhere, and because much of what I find myself writing are bits of "glue" between other parts of the system, as opposed to major applications.
Duede, you're comparing a "child OS to parent OS" relationship to an "OS to a certification program".
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
True, but Debian doesn't need to care directly about Ubuntu growing, new users needing to learn etc. will be handled by Ubuntu. They need to make plans for how the growth of derivatives will affect them, but that's not the same as planning for their own growth.
If their objective is to make the OS freely avaliable to anyone then growing becomes an objective by proxy.
Not really. They already have enough ftp mirrors for anyone who wants to be able to get Debian to be able to do so pretty easily. They're freely available to anyone with an internet connection, and anyone with a spare fiver can get a CD which is still free in the GNU sense. (I'm not sure if that's their only objective or they also want free-as-in-beer availability wherever possible). Growing isn't going to help for anyone outside those categories in any way I can see.
PS: An operating system is different from a football team...
Agreed. It's not my analogy.
I am trolling
Yeah, debian is the best distro out there but what do you think about remove non-free software at all? Even if you do that distinction non-free software is yet supported by debian. Another little thing, you should try to apply less patches, often programs in debian are totally different from upstream. I love APT!
I have never seen an article w/ so many obvious typos in my life, and I am a HS drop-out who failed engrish!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Your comment about sounding like RMS went without justification. Perhaps if more people listened to what RMS said and why, we'd have a community of people who aren't so eager to give up their software freedom for a little convenience.
With a post like that, I'm quite sure you are not developing any kind of module.
A college football team is always aiming to win the league.
:-P
Okay, okay, as a University of Kentucky fan, my view of what a football team should strive for is probably skewed compared to most people. (We'd be happy with a 5-win season...)
So yeah, that analogy probably isn't the best. My point is people shouldn't give up striving for something good (in this case: making Debian a quality, free [as in speech] distro) just because some market analyst or statistician (neither of which have yet to be produced by the parent-poser) says you can't.
Debian IIRC has repeatedly stated they are not trying to become the OS everyone uses, just to make a good OS for the people who make it to use, and make it freely available for anyone who wants to use/improve it. So they don't need to plan to grow because growing isn't an important objective for them.
I think our definitions of growth are different. If the definition of growth is developing the distro to become a more usable, stable, and versatile OS, I think Debian's goal should be to grow. However, if the definition of growth is to snag a greater user-base, I totally agree with you -- that's not what Debian is about.
This sig rocks the casbah.
Each package requires customization to work under Debian. Wouldn't it be easy to slip a backdoor or two into any number of given packages? E.g., a developer responsible for Debian GTK (or whatever) might add some backdoor code. Or there could be an even more subtle attack wherein one developer adds partial code to one package, a second developers adds partial code to a second package with the intent that a user who installed both packages would be subject to a backdoor attack. How could this possibly be detected?
"Ready to ship"? How about if they just do more shipping? Better promotion of idle/orphan projects and tighter project management would keep Debian releases at a useable speed while retaining their valuable stability. One valuable technique would be promoting bugfixing on neglected packages to more active projects which depend on them down the chain. That is already in the interest of the dependant projects, but coordination from overall Debian management would produce more cooperation across projects, especialy in that productive "upchain crossroads". It leverages open source, open projects, and mutual selfinterest along with expertise in the code in question. That counts as "internal processes", though not as internal as focusing only on the core Debian team.
--
make install -not war
What makes Debian different from any other linux distro? Anyone with access to the source code could inject a trojan or virus into it. This includes employees from Redhat, SUSE, Mandrivia, etc.
Same goes for Microsoft Windows. With all of the developers and speghetti code that the operating system contains, who knows what's in it.
That being said, I believe that the integrity of the Debian developers, the exhaustive testing process that they go through before declaring a distro stable, and the personal pride that someone takes with having his name publically associated with a Debian package limits the possiblity of something of this nature happening.
I would venture to say that a disgruntled employee of a commercial product (take your pick) would be more likely to inject a trojan/virus before a Debian developer would.
Umm, a stock OO.o 2.0 dictionary flags "braggadocious" as incorrect and suggests "braggadocios."
So much said here about Debian and Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu. Yes its a spinoff from Debian but Mandrake was a Spinoff from RedHat before it went solo. Ubuntu is good not only because of the cutting edge technology it gets from Debian but also because of the management, marketting, and administration. A well engineered hybrid of technology and usability. Which sure as hell beats replies from Debian elitists who mostly go "RTFM. F-cake!" (i'm still hurting from that). With the experience Ubuntu gets from Debian, it would not be surprise if they able to go on for a long time even if Debian drops off.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
Branden Robinson was a lot more interesting when he was in charge of the X Strike Force; he sure knew how to give a good rant.
But I guess as Project Leader he's got to be more diplomatic. Oh well.
Kill your spell checker. Buy a real dictionary!
Someone who wanted to gain control or log information from of thousands of machines would do such a thing: Russian spyware developers who work for organized crime, Chinese developers who work for the Chinese government hacking into Western networks, etc. The incentive for these people is criminal or political/military, respectively.
How do you know there is no trojens in Windows? Or Solaris? or Redhat?
Answer is:
You don't.
And it's not like there hasn't been a long long history of backdoors built into closed source software. Microsoft used apps and updates to send information back to Microsoft about your activities, for instance. Sony installing it's rootkit. Then there are employees that bug software with backdoors, or they use backdoors for troubleshooting and such and don't remove them because they figure nobody will be able to figure it out.
There is no assurance that any software that you use anywere is backdoor free. With Debian, like any other major software project, you just have to trust them.
Anyways, if your paranoid just look at the source code and compile your packages from it. This is a much higher level of assurance then anything else you can do.
The system is transparent. You can look at the source code, strong security divisions are in place, you can run programs in chroot or Xen, you have debuggers, you have nmap, you have ethereal, you have snort, you have oprofile you have all all these tools ready for you to use to perform security audits and analysis on any program you want to use. Nothing in your system has to remain a secret to you, everything is open.
This is much more then any other OS other then other Linux, Solaris or BSD distros... Nobody else comes close.
What makes Debian different from any other distribution in this regard? Further, what makes a Debian maintainer any more likely to inject their own backdoor code as opposed to the upstream maintainer? The entire point of open-source is that sometimes these things happen, but without the source, it's significantly harder to detect.
No comment.
Oh, I dunno. Check the source, perhaps?
In Bob we trust.
really nice to this article and get some news about that
If the point of Debian is to give users power over their computing experience, why do they 'standardize' on a brain-dead interface like GNOME?
KDE has more flexibility and integration, with both it and QT being GPL.
The only reason I can see for this is politics. The Copywrite to QT is owned by Troll Tech, and the FSF can't control it. And the FSF is all about control, that's why they asked the maintainer of Xemacs to hand over his copywrite. That's also why they insist on bundling their utilities as part of GNOME rather than part of the window manager/system.
I'm actually about the freedom to choose. I choose to run Linux, not GNU/Linux as the FSF is trying to get control over the name as well.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.