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."

Comments

Debian is great, this article is not

[mr.newt]

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

Re:Debian is great, this article is not

[Anonymous Coward]

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*).

Overrated. Debian actually *is* about Free Software. It's not just RMS-clonage, it's what their charter is.

And Debian actually *is* the only significant distro that isn't tied to a corporation. Which matters.

Hell I use Fedora myself, but you can't use it and not be aware that it's pwned by Red Hat. The community is largely irrelevant astro-turf. If Red Hat turned around tomorrow and said "fly Fedora, be free!" it would sink like a lead weight.

But otherwise, I agree TFA blows.

Re:Assumption? Hell no.

[b17bmbr]

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.

Hacking the Whip

[Doc Ruby]

"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.