Evolution Of Debian Package Dependencies Resemble Predator-Prey Relationships

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have performed an ecological analysis of software packages in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution over time; they found that dependencies can be successfully modeled as a predator-prey relationship."

Comments

Deep research indeed!

[m4c north]

FTFA:

The team went back to 1993 and compiled statistics on every major stable release

In other words, "The team compiled statistics on the last three major releases".

Re:Deep research indeed!

[X0563511]

You must be a release or two behind. the package 'sense-of-humor' had a critical bug that was recently fixed.

Pure nonsense

[Chemisor]

Once again, people versed in one discipline apply their skills to another with results that sound fancy and expensive, while really are just nonsense.

Re:Pure nonsense

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Once again, people versed in one discipline apply their skills to another with results that sound fancy and expensive, while really are just nonsense.

Not really. Trial and error is at the heart of evolution which can apply just as easily to living organisms, memes, or software (which is actually a form of meme). It just happens to work quicker on the latter. Predator-Prey relationships are merely an extension of evolution, and is all about inter-dependance. If a package depends on another, one could be considered predator, and the other prey. If development slows on that which is depended on, then the predator must find new prey or face lower numbers and/or extinction.

The greater mistake is a myopic view of disciplines, thinking that nobody else can contribute to the understanding of another discipline except those who specialize in it.

Re:Pure nonsense

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Let me see if I can put this on context for you: Life doesn't debug, debian does.

It's called reproduction. Failure in life results in decreased chance of reproduction, including the ultimate decreased chance, death.

Dependencies compete for limit resources called developers. Just look at all the various sound systems Linux has gone through. They, and the software that depends on them fight to gain more users to thus draw more developers. And, they either live and reproduce, or die.

You are thinking of predator-prey wrong. It's not about eating by about parasitic relationships. And biology is very good at that. What this can show a developer is, based on known algorithms of life and chances of survival, which pieces of software are most in danger of extinction. And that's not always obvious. A music app might be facing extinction because of a particular reliance on a codec dependency that is slowly losing support in favor of another. It let's the developer see further down the road.

Re:Pure nonsense

[Kamiza Ikioi]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2541160&cid=38152056 - Laid out here. It can lead developers to spot problem applications, that, though popular enough now, may be relying on a few key dying dependencies... a sort of hidden death that without enough developers, the software, though popular, could quickly deteriorate and die.

I'd use an example, but I'll inevitably piss someone off if I mention any packages.

Re:Pure nonsense

[izomiac]

Each successive generation of a species contains fewer "bugs" than its predecessor, as disadvantageous traits are selected against. This is the sole responsibility of mate selection by individuals. In software, a new module generally contains the useful feature set of the older one, so it's not whole inaccurate to say the newer module consumed the older one. User complaints are one of the major selective pressures that drive these processes.

Ecology is an emergent property of evolution, which is an emergent property arising from mathematics. There are a few rules (e.g. selection must occur, descendants must inherit traits, etc.), but it happens in many areas outside of biology (e.g. chemical species, expressions in language, consumer products). Now, that said, I personally don't see much insight being offered by the comparison, but it's an interesting phenomenon.

Re:Pure nonsense

[Thing 1]

The transmission by repetition also fits, although maybe not as obviously, but if people don't pick up the software and use it, does it exist? The transmission by repetitition aspect of software is in running it repetedly.

Interesting! So, the success of a software program might be measured by the total computers it can convince to run it, and the amount of time it runs. (I guess "System Idle Process" is thus the most successful, by that metric. :)

Re:Pure nonsense

[pclminion]

If a package depends on another, one could be considered predator, and the other prey. If development slows on that which is depended on, then the predator must find new prey or face lower numbers and/or extinction.

Dammit, this other package my package depends on is just too fucking stable! It never changes! Every day it's just the same damn thing again! I need to base my package on something that's more of a moving target. Otherwise I run the risk of my own software becoming... (shudder) STABLE.

Re:Pure nonsense

[TapeCutter]

"Life doesn't debug" - missed the Darwin memo, eh?

Re:Pure nonsense

[hawk]

In 96 or 97, this was solved when a major package--live or some such, on which nearly everything actually depended to execut--was declared by one person to have an impure license, andhe unilaterally pulled it. If you ran an update, you ended up with a system that w dead in the water, you could run a shell, but I don't remember whether it was single user or console.

In the meantime, I tried FreeBSD afain, and that time it supported my hardware, and stayed with it (and discovered how FreeBSD & Linux would fsck one another's file systems into the ground if left mounted for days).

hawk

Ok, I'll read...

[migla]

I read the first linked FA. It doesn't explain, but just states that dependencies are a predator-prey relationship. Would that mean as in cats depend on mice (in a hypothetical ekosystem with not much more than mice and cats) and without no mice there would be no cats? If that's what they mean, then that is likely just a statement of the nature of packages using a biology analogy, not any kind of findings from their research.

Was there something to take to heart about the things about modularity and conflicts and stuff? Too tired or ignorant to get that.

Mandatory XKCD

[Urban Garlic]

... is here.

Title is wrong.

[sconeu]

People in Kansas know that the Debian Package Dependencies were Intelligently Designed!!!

Re:Title is wrong.

[CAIMLAS]

There's no evidence that both intelligent design and evolution is involved, in the biological case. After all, Debian, which is designed and maintained by intelligent beings, demonstrates a very strong similarity to evolutionary process. It's not a proof in and of itself, but it's suggestive, IMO.

This has many potential applications

[hyades1]

I sometimes suspect that my former marriage could have been successfully modeled as a predator/prey relationship.

Re:First post

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yes, I see their point, but I think this has been taken further by the Debian derivatives.

There are Badgers, Lynx, Narwhals and Ocelots, ferchrissake! I hardly think that, cruel as he is, "Sid" is any kind of predator. And "Hamm"? Surely you're joking!

Lotka-Volterra equations

[ortholattice]

I don't have access to the full version. Maybe I overlooked something, but I couldn't find anything in the abstract or article that gave more than a fuzzy picture about the "relationship" they are discussing. The set of equations normally used are the Lotka-Volterra equations. An example of the behavior of this equation is shown here on that page. Is this what they found matches their data?

Genesis 1:1

[qualityassurancedept]

God said "sudo apt-get update" and God saw the repositories were good and God said "sudo apt-get upgrade" ... and on the seventh day God was able to connect by wifi to his local hotspot after finally getting his ndiswrapper drivers working and he rested.

Re:Genesis 1:1

[healyp]

Why would God be using sudo?

Re:Genesis 1:1

[qualityassurancedept]

Actually, I guess sudo probably wouldn't be installed right off the bat but yes he could just su to root. running the universe as root is dangerous so he would be better off creating an adminstrator/user profile like Jesus or something and then adding Jesus to the sudoers.