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Talking With Debian's Branden Robinson

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the open-source-is-made-of-people dept.

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."

11 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Future Growth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    and that comment is based on what assumption??

  2. Re:UBUNTU is debian done right. by arose · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except that Ubuntu is derived from Debian unstable every 6 months.

    --
    Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
  3. Re:Future Growth? by Vorondil28 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  4. ubuntu? by kebes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:ubuntu? by SquadBoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As a long time Debian user (ex now but for reasons that have nothing to do with this or anything else mentioned in the article) the only problem with Ubuntu, well there are many but I'm ignoring what I see as some of it's more fatal flaws as many view these as features, is that their users tend to pollute Debian support fourms and tend to not take no for an answer. As in "Yes we *know* Ubuntu is based on Debian but *no* it is not Debian and no we will not support it."

      Other than that issue it's not like they are competing or anything and for what it is Ubuntu seems to be fairly decent. I just don't happen to like what it is. But on that point I'm going to be at odds with most folks here and thus only wanted to point out that people need to really grok that *no* based-ons are not Debian and that people who support Debian are, in general, not interested in supporting based-ons and when you are told that you *really* should take no for an answer.

      --

      Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
    2. Re:ubuntu? by SquadBoy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nah. If you pay close attention the swearing usually only happens after the same question is asked by the same person for the 5th time or so. :P

      --

      Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
  5. Re:Assumption? Hell no. by llvllatrix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:UBUNTU is debian done right. by arose · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So? I didn't say that it's not benefitial for Debian. But Ubuntu is NOT "debian done right" because it's not a fork, but more a layer on top of it, depending on everything below. Ubuntu depends on Debian the same way it depends on GCC and Linux, that's good, otherwise I wouldn't have such a nice OS on my machine.

    --
    Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
  7. Sounding like RMS isn't bad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Sounding like RMS isn't bad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your missing it dude. That's not windbaggery. Fedora (as the biggest example) *does* exist "merely at the sufferance of a corporate entity". If Red Hat stopped supporting it tomorrow, it would be gone faster than you can say "Red Hat Linux 9.0". (You do remember RHL, don't you?) That couldn't happen to Debian.

  8. Re:Marketing by killjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I really wish people would stop calling debian (and even linux) a product. Furthermore it would be very helpful if people stopped thinking about it as a product too.

    Linux is a gift to the world, it's a game, it's a social experiment, it's the last ditch attempt at building a selfless meritocracy but it's not a product.

    There I got that off my chest now.

    --
    evil is as evil does