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Debian Not Looking For Commercial Fortune
Geoffery writes "Some analysts foresee a less than rosy future for projects such as Debian, claiming free coding is all well and good, but that without a solid financial backing — such as the models adopted by Red Hat and to a greater degree Novell/Suse — Debian will ultimately hit a brick wall.
ZDNet interviews Steve McIntyre, the new man leading the organization on issues of 'community registrations' and future plans."
News at 11.
If only they could agree on who "They" were. :-)
Heck, with some old sid packaging contibutions, I am a "They".
Don't f*ck with Deb. You'll bring down six or seven other distros downstream.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As long as there are people who are looking for a challenge and want to write code for the fun of it, there will always be open source software.
Life would be easier if I had the source code.
My first (and only) experience with debian was installing it on my ARM-based NSLU2. Red Hat, ubuntu, gentoo, etc weren't an option. Sadly, we've seen a convergence towards x86 (with gcc and linux). I'm glad debian exists. Maybe I'll chuck a couple bucks their way.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Apparently the only person that thinks non-commercial Linux development is a bust is the reporter from ZD Asia. The interviewed thinks about it totally different although 3 questions border on that subject and one is even somewhat insulting, Steve keeps hammering that this is a non-profit and they've been doing it like that for 15 years. There is no "problem" here as the interviewer makes it out to be.
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The article itself is far more positive than the description. No one but the submitter is questioning Debian's future. The interview asked some pointed questions and was obviously impressed with the answers as the first paragraph or two show.
So the big problem is too much participation? OMG, they are doomed! The bottom line is that Debian is community generated, excellent and growing. The interviewer presented this well, let's not spin it into something it's not.
Congratulations to the Debian team for letting themselves define what success is, not others.
Just because success to the many means building a huge company, profits, power. It absolutely doesn't mean it's the same for everyone. It's hard not to find it fascinating when groups get fixated on this.
For the Debian folks, independence and freedom is success, of that they've done a great job!
Debian project has really come around and come alive in the last two years. it doesn't need any power/money-grubbing scum trying to change its direction or management. And remember, those 30% of you desktop GNU/Linux users with Ubuntu, that's 95%+ Debian.
Ubuntu, Linspire, Xandros, DSL, MEPIS, Knoppix, and several other distributions all depend on Debian's code base. If Debian suddenly finds themselves without resources, these other distros will pitch in, if only so that they themselves can continue to exist.
Not so long ago this was 'obvious' about Red Hat and any number of other distros too. But things change, and it's not redundant or obvious or unwelcome to see a solid distro that's committing itself to a non-profit route.
Nothing like a little hyperbole to put your ad hits through the roof. I think the last question proves that this was cynical and intentional: "Debian will be 15 years old this August. Where would you like to see the project in another decade and a half?"
include $sig;
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Have to agree with you there... also, in a pleasant change from the rest of the OSS world, their systems are superbly documented. I find the debian-amdministration site particularly well-grounded in the real world.
What the writer is missing is the symbiotic relationship of Ubuntu and Debian. Debian does many things really really well. Somethings, like frequent releases, not so well. But for those of us who use Debian, that would be a beautiful design on top of the cake and frosting we already have... Without it, that cake tastes pretty darn good.
Ubuntu came along and tackled this problem, so Debian can continue doing what it does best. To top it off, Ubuntu has funding. And they aren't greedy leeches who take Debian's hard work and exploit it as their own distribution. They contribute back much of their work to Debian (if the Debian developers like the changes). With Debian, Ubuntu wouldn't survive. Ubuntu's funding and hard work ends up helping Debian.
So about saying "Debian will hit a brick wall"... I would ask the question, did you close your mind and hit a brick wall?
Our perception of a situation is based on our experiences and our knowledge of the situation. If we are missing information, our perception about the situation may be off. Like the fact I haven't read the actual article this is about... I'm probably missing something.
this account is a twitter sockpuppet
Over 50% of desktop Linux users use a Debian-based distro. My virtual hosting plan at Dreamhost uses Debian. Dell sells computers with a Debian-based distro installed. I'm pretty sure there are many companies that will support and administer Debian installations, as I know there is for FreeBSD, a slightly older operating system.
I don't use Debian on my computer, but it's definitely not dying.
"Will Debian always suffer from existing at the hobbyist programmer level and its inherent proximity to the archetypal non-business-minded software engineer mentality?"
Suffer? 12 years of working with linux, and Debian has consistently been the only distribution I've seen that doesn't really "suffer" from anything at all. In fact, I'd say that the so-called "archetypal non-business-minded engineers" have time and again produced the creme de la creme of distros and done it right. There's no other distribution other than maybe Slack that I'm more comfortable with putting into production and knowing it will run day in, day out until the plug is finally pulled.
FUD
Besides - what's Shuttleworth going to run his stuff on if Deb goes down the tubes? Fedora? LOL
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
This is purely selfish, but since I use sid, I wish Debian would release less often. When the "freeze" comes, I am left with a computer that doesn't have much to do.
If there is any problem facing Debian (and it's debatable whether or not there is any at all), it's not a lack of commercial backing, but rather the management structure within the project. In the past it has been prone to a fair amount of in-fighting, where there are lots of conflicting opinions about how things should be done, and things don't move forward until they're resolved. This is partly why the move from Sarge to Etch took as long as it did. Sometimes, someone needs to take charge and make a decision, whether or not everyone is happy with it. Unfortunately, when everyone is working for you for free, it's not smart to piss too many of them off too often.
That said, Debian is still my weapon of choice for stable, reliable servers. Unless you have very specific needs that can only be catered for by other OSes, you can't beat it.
You define "having something to do" as "apt-get update"? If you're a developer I would expect you to be working on the Stable release; if you're just an end user, why do you care if some package doesn't update for a month or so?
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It's not so much a problem of too much popularity rather than stupid bottlenecks. Until a couple of weeks ago, there was one single person who was responsible for creating the accounts of newly accepted DDs (Debian Developers). That person had been MIA for a few months, and it was infuriating for the applicants to have finished all the painful evaluation, only to be blocked by a silly administrative failure.
This has been fixed.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Same reason I run sid in the first place.
If anything Debian is MORE LIKELY to still be around long after commercial enterprises have closed up shop.
When you don't depend on a steady stream of income to keep a project running, the only threat to it is loss of interest. And since RedHat and SuSE aren't genuinely free (ie you can't get ISOs from the vendors), I think Debian will have substantial interest for a very long time.
If you really want to be on the bleeding edge, shouldn't you be on one of the distros that has a genuine rolling schedule, such as Gentoo or whatever? That way it's always "up to date" and there's never really a point in time where the packages halt (though I suppose a new Linux kernel or GCC version could slow things down for a day or two).
AFAIK you can use gentoo without actually compiling everything from source.
Care about privacy? Read this!
That's interesting but the result has been good anyway. Bottlenecks that lock out malice are very good to have. If one person has been good enough for the last 15 years, two should be enough for the next seven.
Way back when or back in the day as the kids say I worked on the ARPANET which was at the time going to go to TCP/IP. I was asked how things worked and I explained to people how it worked with RFCs and the like. People thought I was crazy and that it couldn't possibly work that way or continue to work that way or at the very least couldn't go on in anything close to the way it was going. This is now coming up on like 25 years ago. Have Fun, Sends Steve
No, no-way.
I think that the problem is in the term "non-profit". In my language, Greek, we use a term which translates like "an organization who's aim is not the profit".
Non-profit organizations do not have profit as a goal. However they do need it as a medium in order to succeed at their higher purpose.
So, Debian needs money. However they will not sacrifice their "social contract" (Gentoo term) in order to maximize income.