Well, my personal view is that distributors should ship what people want to buy. I sell Debian CDs (no, I'm not going to advertise prices) and let they buyer choose what they want... want source, you get it; don't want it, you don't get it (and save around $5.25). I sell slightly more binary+source sets than binary-only. (With the m68k Red Hat, it's not an issue since the source and binary fit on one disc.)
I also think source CDs are often obsoleted so quickly that sometimes they're not worth having around, unless the upstream author provides diffs (rare--the kernel being one of the exceptions). Particularly with a distro you're almost always better off downloading the source for the packages you want to hack on. I think most free software advocates (particularly our friends at the socialistic end like RMS, if they were logically consistent) would prefer that we avoid waste (giving people what they don't want, and using natural resources to produce CDs that half our customers don't want to use) than universally distributing source code.
And no, I'm not just saying this because I'm tired of duplicating source CD-Rs for people;-)
Debian uses its own package format, but you can use rpms via the rpm and alien packages. Why any sane person would want to do this is another question entirely...
I think the idea here is that Corel will improve the newbie-unfriendly aspects of Debian.
In any event, I think most of the "newbie unfriendly" argument centers around dselect, which is a piece of crap but is definitely on the way out (see the apt project, particularly gnome-apt).
I suppose the one most serious criticism that could be levelled at RHS is that they--like all of the other commercial distros--are in it for the bucks, which means some things get left behind. For example, Red Hat's "Rough Cuts" ports aren't done by them... it's hackers like Jes Sorensen who did all the work without one cent from Red Hat. Contrast that with Debian where it's all volunteers so things become "official" because they have the quality already, not because of what some person trying to commercialize it thinks.
But clearly m68k-neglect isn't what bothers most people. Hell, it isn't even what bothers me. I think what does bother people is that RHS (whatever SuSE and Caldera may think) is the 800 pound gorilla, and therefore represents what's "wrong" with the commercialization of Linux, even if it's not the one guilty of those sins. If anything, they're more benign than Caldera (whose cheapo packages only work for 90 days or so, IIRC), SuSE and Corel. Well at least two of the three by the time most people read this...
Having said that, I don't want to see Red Hat gone... if only for the "Thank god for Arkansas" factor (as in "dpkg may suck, but at least it's not the worst... thank god for rpm!").
So there you go... from a Debian weenie's perspective at any rate.
I'm disappointed in the Veep... after all, with his recent invective against urban sprawl, he should hardly be clogging up cyberspace with yet another lame candidate site.;-)
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Well, my personal view is that distributors should ship what people want to buy. I sell Debian CDs (no, I'm not going to advertise prices) and let they buyer choose what they want... want source, you get it; don't want it, you don't get it (and save around $5.25). I sell slightly more binary+source sets than binary-only. (With the m68k Red Hat, it's not an issue since the source and binary fit on one disc.)
;-)
I also think source CDs are often obsoleted so quickly that sometimes they're not worth having around, unless the upstream author provides diffs (rare--the kernel being one of the exceptions). Particularly with a distro you're almost always better off downloading the source for the packages you want to hack on. I think most free software advocates (particularly our friends at the socialistic end like RMS, if they were logically consistent) would prefer that we avoid waste (giving people what they don't want, and using natural resources to produce CDs that half our customers don't want to use) than universally distributing source code.
And no, I'm not just saying this because I'm tired of duplicating source CD-Rs for people
Debian uses its own package format, but you can use rpms via the rpm and alien packages. Why any sane person would want to do this is another question entirely...
Many, but not all licenses... BSD for one has no obligation to share your changes.
And no OS license (that meets the OSD/DFSG) obligates you to free any software that you write and happen to bundle with OS software.
I think the idea here is that Corel will improve the newbie-unfriendly aspects of Debian.
In any event, I think most of the "newbie unfriendly" argument centers around dselect, which is a piece of crap but is definitely on the way out (see the apt project, particularly gnome-apt).
I suppose the one most serious criticism that could be levelled at RHS is that they--like all of the other commercial distros--are in it for the bucks, which means some things get left behind. For example, Red Hat's "Rough Cuts" ports aren't done by them... it's hackers like Jes Sorensen who did all the work without one cent from Red Hat. Contrast that with Debian where it's all volunteers so things become "official" because they have the quality already, not because of what some person trying to commercialize it thinks.
But clearly m68k-neglect isn't what bothers most people. Hell, it isn't even what bothers me. I think what does bother people is that RHS (whatever SuSE and Caldera may think) is the 800 pound gorilla, and therefore represents what's "wrong" with the commercialization of Linux, even if it's not the one guilty of those sins. If anything, they're more benign than Caldera (whose cheapo packages only work for 90 days or so, IIRC), SuSE and Corel. Well at least two of the three by the time most people read this...
Having said that, I don't want to see Red Hat gone... if only for the "Thank god for Arkansas" factor (as in "dpkg may suck, but at least it's not the worst... thank god for rpm!").
So there you go... from a Debian weenie's perspective at any rate.
I'm disappointed in the Veep... after all, with his recent invective against urban sprawl, he should hardly be clogging up cyberspace with yet another lame candidate site. ;-)
I guess this means I have to start work on the Linux/m68k 2.2 announcement then...