I believe an open, LINUX OS on the mainframe would make software portability easier, and would make the argument to migrate both the software and protocol stack to a pure IP environment much more palatable from a business perspective.
I dont know if you are aware of this, but there already is a version of UNIX running on MVS, and it has been around for a few years now. Its called MVS/Open Edition, and the API is quite public. Any portabilty issues could (in theory) be addressed on that platform.
However, IBM's Linux strategy does make a lot of sense. As you correctly pointed out, the portability will indeed improve, if what they are trying to do is port a Linux application from one platform to another Linux platform.
Admittedly, most of the programming world is far more familiar with TCP/IP. But this is not an argument for getting rid of SNA. SNA was developed and optimized for the mainframe architecture, and there is no doubt that it does what it needs to do extremely well.
The argument for knocking off of SNA would be if TCP/IP is shown to have superior performance characteristics than SNA - something which is not the case. The protocol is indeed proprietary (which is bad), but it is not screwed up. You seemed to have made that statement solely because you, personally, are unfamiliar with SNA.
And as another poster has pointed out, TCP/IP on IBM mainframes does exist, and has existed for quite some time.
Coca-Cola is not a means to an end like software is. You need driver software to run hardware. Without the software, your hardware is pretty much useless. Charging for drivers is valid only if it goes into the production cost of the hardware. Or, in other words, if the driver is provided with the hardware when you buy it. Charging for the source of the drivers is absolutely unjustified.
In this scheme of things, one cannot really draw an analogy with Coca-Cola. But let me give it a try. Imagine that every soft-drink can only be drunk with a special straw that is dependant on the formula of the drink. Some soft-drink manufacturers provide the straw which will enable you to drink their product. Others dont, but provide you with enough info to make / buy a suitable straw. Coca-Cola on the other hand will sell their products to anyone, but will sell straws only to bug-eyed aliens from Mars, and absolutely refuses to provide info on which straws to buy, or how to make a suitable straw. Is this situation acceptable? I think not!
Well, in that case, I must say that Debian's quality isnt as good as it is claimed to be. I have downloaded and installed broken packages from unstable. The number of bugs in unstable is definitely much more than in the stable release. I think this observation is more consistent with treating this distribution as not-quite release-worthy rather than as a frequently updated release.
In other words, while it may be true that "unstable" gets frequently updated, I dont think that is the reason for its name.
Thank you for that tidbit about an "experimental" distro. I must have missed that on debian-devel...
However, your defense of Debian is predicated on your opinion that it is targetted towards the Sysadmin. This, I am not so sure about. For example, a while ago, it was touted that Debian provides a complete SGML solution. The wording of the announcement was such that it gave the idea : if you want SGML - use Debian!
To, my mind, this changes the picture. Debian is no longer targetting sysadmins. It is also targetting ordinary users of systems. Things like GNOME are end-user frills - rarely does a sysadmin need a desktop environment.
Furthermore, it can be argued that sysadmins who are so stringent about stability should be preferring well established and mature OS's like AIX, or OS/400 or VMS or MVS. Why choose a newbie on the software landscape in the first place if stability is that much of a concern?
Ever get the feeling that waiting for a Debian release is like waiting for Rip Van Winkle to wake up? It'll happen - just not on a timescale you are accustomed to.
The there are two excuses for this delay that are often quoted (1) Debian has a better quality (2) Debian is not behind other distribution in terms of software versions since people can always download from unstable. Make no mistake - these are excuses and not reasons, and let me explain why.
1. Better quality : Quality is always a tradeoff against time to release. Redhat, IIRC release their first distro with a 2.2 kernel somewhere around June. Sure they had bugs, but assuming that Redhat tripled their QA efforts, in order to improve stability and security, they would still have delayed by possibly another two months. Even Slackware, which has a much better reputation than Redhat, was able to beat Debian handily.
Lets face the facts folks, the Debian organization is just slower. Some of this slowness may be attributable to quality. Most of it is not.
A glaring example of this slowness was seen recently : look at when the Y2K compliance release was released.
2. Latest software from unstable : Hah! Are the Debian people who spout this nonsense contending that a distribution labelled as "unstable" is release quality? If so, then release it.
1. I think you are using percentages in a misleading way. A change from 1 to 6 users is a 500% gain. But is it really as significant as a gain from 10000 to 30000 (200% gain) users? The gain quoted in the second case might be sufficient to make the difference between a red bottomline and a black one. The first gain, probably wont make a difference.
2. I never said that the PC was responsible for creating the net. Read my comment again : it talks about the explosion in the user-base of the internet.
If that was available in NT - Why would any NT shop bother to do the switch?
But "shop" switching is a user-community switching - not developer switching - especially if we are talking about NT. My comment was about the reasons why the developer community showed a preference to Linux - thereby causing a user community expansion.
First of all, get your facts straight : gcc is not proprietary.
Secondly, the *BSD's do have a choice. Nobody forced them to use GCC. They always have the option of writing a compiler with the BSD license. The fact that none of the compiler writers have done so speaks for the popularity of the BSD license.
I definitely agree that most of the internet runs on UNIX. But the reason for the popularity of the internet, and the equipment used to run it are two different things. Just consider that the internet has been around for nearly three decades. The only people using it then were in the R&D establishments and academia. And this did not constitute much of a user-base and therefore, things like online shopping wouldnt really have clicked (pardon the pun).
With the advent of the PC and PC-based internet clients, however, the user base changed significantly. The user base of the internet today has become almost synonymous with the user-base of PC's. The huge PC revolution thus is directly responsible for the huge expansion in the popularity of the internet.
You missed out the most important reason : the BSD licence.
Think about it : the Linux developers are just as smart as the BSD developers. The BSD movement also had the advantage that they were a mature operating system at the time Linux was a blip on the horizon. So why didnt the BSD movement gain as many developers as Linux did? Simply because the license was unattractive to them.
Some people also say that the centralized committee nature of BSD is a detractment. Bosh! Linux also has the same committee nature where a patch doesnt appear in a distribution unless it has been blessed by the core developers and / or Linus. The only difference is that this committee is not as formalized as the *BSD committees.
No offense, but didnt you read the article? The point was not that BSD is superior or inferior to Linux. It was that fewer people are contributing to it.
Yes, applications written for Linux may run on BSD and vice-versa. But the catch really is the license. If NT were as stable as *BSD or Linux, do you think that the development community would switch over to NT? No way - and this is because of the license.
Note that the user community might switch over - but that isnt the point. When we talk of contributions, its the development community that we are talking about.Now, if the BSD license was changed to make a closed source distribution impossible, then you would see contributions increasing tremendously.
PS : The story to which we are commenting is a bit confused in that the writer is unable to distinguish between the development community and the user community. Linux achieved a bigger user community because of features provided by a bigger development community.
Now if only Debian would have a faster release cycle for stable software instead of having us wait over a year past the time that other vendors release code.
I can see it now : in Feb '00 the 2.4 kernel is out. By March '00 major vendors have started to release products which include the 2.4 kernel. By May '00, the releases will have stabilized. Meanwhile, in Jan '00, Debian announces with great fanfare that a code freeze for their release with the 2.2 kernel. And by March '00 (probably) they will have released Potato.
Nevertheless, rocket technology is but one area that makes up a mission. Sensor technology, the control systems, mission objectives are all more complex today that in the '60s.
To be sure, the technology in the '60s involved systems that were far less complex than today's systems. When you try to do more (today), your confidence level will go down.
You may be right - but in that case you are not talking about the first instance where such technology was used. The Ranger missions (which were the first missions to get any kind of surface data back from the moon) were designed to crash into the lunar surface. Just a few seconds before impact the cameras would switch on, photograph the lunar surface and transmitting the data. The craft and camera was not expected to survive impact.
This was in a time when noone had any idea of what the lunar surface looked like from close up. The gathering of seismic data came much later.
History records that the first 5 (or was it 6?) Ranger missions were complete failures. For various reasons, the cameras failed to turn on before impact. Finally, with their necks on the chopping block, Ranger 6 (or maybe 7) did manage to send back some pictures.
Note that rockets and lunar landings in those days were very much experimental technology, and so one can (with hindsight) forgive the Ranger mission designers for the first five (or six) failures. This is in contrast to todays goof ups (the Hubble and the recent metric conversion fiasco come to mind), where NASA indeed should have performed better.
The publicly stated reason for closing new-maintainers was so that existing packages could be maintained better (did I get that right?). Are things any better now? It seems to me to be a non-sequitor that you can improve the maintainance of existing packages by preventing new people from joining - but maybe I am missing something here. At what point will you decide that packages are being maintained well enough so that new maintainers can be reopened? Couldnt whatever course of actions that you took upon closing new-maintainers also have been executed with new-maintainers still open?
Its all very well of you to say so. Of course you are probably one of the Debian members who voted to decide that new members should not be admitted to Debian right now. Pray tell us, if you expect us to contribute, why we cant be provided the same facilities you enjoy?
What do you mean by "traditional sense"? The traditional sense of the word "Free", or traditional sense of the word "Freedom"? Because, the "Free" meaning doesnt make sense in the context of the GPL or the BSD license. So, if it is freedom that you are referring to, there really is nothing confusing about this term.
I would really like to understand the point of view of the BSD license advocates who state that the BSD license provides more freedom than the GPL. From what I see, Stallman is right : the BSD license actually sacrifices the freedom of the programmer to give some freedom to the entrepreneur. I dont have a problem with entrepreneurs - they do have an important place in society. But if I spend time on writing software, I do not want to sacrifice my freedoms to provide the entrepeneur some freedom. He is free to use software that I write - but on the same freedom footing. And this is exactly what the GPL provides.
>>Are you off the opinion that because I am not a developer, that my opinion isnt important?
Debian is a democracy of sorts, but is a democracy of developers (in the broad sense of the word - people who actively contribute to Debian's development - be it as maintainers, technical writers or submitters of useful bug reports).
>>Would I then have the "right" to "judge"?
I, like my fellow developers, welcome opinions of people interested in Debian, but ultimately what really counts are contributions. I've read one "dselect sucks" too many from people who aren't willing to work on it (or even just give constructive criticism).
I have in the past submitted patches to debian packages, one of which was acknowledged by the developer (who then promptly disappeared out of sight), and incorporated by none. So, yes, I speak from experience.
In the case of the developer who disappeared out of sight, I later sent him mail offering to take over maintaining his package, but I received no response, and his package continues to languish. (If you want more details, you can email me.)
I've sent mail to the wnpp address regarding packages that I would have liked to adopt. I did receive one response. This did not contain all the info I needed, and later queries vanished into some mail-blackhole that exists on the Debian servers. The information on the wnpp page itself is inconsistent - I've seen packages for which the wnpp page listed one maintainer, the bug reports page listed another, and the package page indicated another. But I digress....
The point that I am trying to make is that (1) My opinion is just as relevant as yours and (2) The current setup of Debian makes it hard for my opinion to be accepted as being as relevant as yours.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that a leader must be authoritarian in nature. Not so. They may wield authority, but that does not made them authoritarian (not in the pejorative sense that you use the word for). For example, I read the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup which is moderated by 6 people. But nobody is rebelling against the moderators claiming that they are stiffling discussion or whatever. Linus is an authority, but the kernel developers accept that without any problem. I could make the same statement about several other developers (just in case you reply that Linus is an exception).
I am still of the opinion that a closed list serves no useful purpose for Debian. The analogy that you make (black budgets and so on), do not fit in. Can Debian punish its developers for revealing what goes on in debian-private? If not, how can you prevent the "secrets" that you discuss there from leaking out to other companies. In fact the example you quoted about Corel falls apart if you take into consideration that there may be employees of Corel who are debian developers, and therefore have access to debian-private. So what exactly have you gained?
..The last person to lead Debian (rather than guide it) described it as "herding kittens" and burned out. Authoritarian leadership doesn't work when you're dealing with volunteers.
I wasnt aware that this had been tried before. However, it may be that the circumstances were different before, and it is time to try this experiment again with the benefit of previous experiences.
Regarding the flamewars :
Who are you to judge? Personally, I'll start worrying the day there isn't a flamewar on the development list, because it'll mean that people have stopped caring.
Two points : Are you off the opinion that because I am not a developer, that my opinion isnt important? What if I were a developer? Would I then have the "right" to "judge"? What is it that makes your judgement superior to mine?
The second thing is that I feel your conclusion is incorrect. No flamewars on lists could mean that (a) Proper arbitration of arguments is being done or (b) People have become politer or (c) People do not care anymore. I dont see why it only has to be (c). In fact, look at the moderated newsgroups on the net. They dont have flamewars and they dont seem to be dying out either.
Why is it you're not publishing all your email on the web? Why is it you don't have a couple of webcams in your bedroom and bathroom?
This is a truly specious argument on your part. My life is not open to the public, and I never claim so. Debian, on the other hand supposedly welcomes the public to participate.
Dont get me wrong : I think Debian is the best distribution around. But the problems that they have been experiencing seems to offset some of the quality benefits that they provide.
What are these problem?
1. A formless decision making process which takes really long to make any decision. I feel that they really need a leader figure with the authority to arbitrate over any decision that is getting prolonged. This leader can be democratically elected or can be anyone who is accepted by the developers.
Some of the consequences of this problem has been (a) A lag in the versions of the kernels and associated programs that they have released (b) An incapacity to set (or meet when set) internal deadlines (c) Raging flamewars on the developer lists which contribute little or nothing to free software. (d) An inablility to get rid of people who are more of a millstone than a help - for example, developers who dont respond to queries / bug reports about their package or do not update their packages from upstream. These packages could probably have better support if they were just orphaned or listed as unmaintained.
2. Openness : Debian prides itself on being open, and indeed, it is more open than other distributions since almost all of their mailing lists are open to the public for scrutiny.
This openness, however, is relative. There is atleast one private list which non-developers cant read. I question the necessity for existence of this list. What is it that Debian needs to discuss behind closed doors that it cannot discuss in the public eye, since Debian itself is not a commercial organization? Witness the recent uproar over the non-admission of new developers which was discussed on debian-private. Did it help that this discussion was totally hidden from the general public? All it did was convince the general public that there is some unofficial policy being implemented to not allow new developers - all denials to the contrary.
Just my two cents....
Can someone tell me what supports his thesis?
on
Is X The Future?
·
· Score: 1
...because I sure didnt see it in his article.
To quote from the article :
"First, the idea of replacing X. Recently there have been several groups making claims that they are creating a new windowing system that will take the place of X. There are cries of "modularity" (see Linus Torvalds' commentary on modularity and why it is flaky). There are cries of "Let's create a new system!" And mainly these cries are just that. There is really no reason to replace X."
What the author goes on to say is that X is an existing standard, so we should not bring up a competing standard but choose to work on the existing standard. It seems to me that he hasnt really addressed the question of whats wrong with the competing standards. What were Linus' comments about modularity, and how do they apply to X's competitors? Why is Berlin bad (according the the author)? I was hoping for information in the article and just got a rant.
Again, later in his article, he rants on about development tailored to PC's. Fragmentation of a standard is a bad idea, but again, I'm sure there is a plus side to what these developers do (or else they wouldnt do it). The author has not addressed the question of what these plus points are, and why they are just not worth it. Can someone enlighten me?
Slashdot Mirror
I dont know if you are aware of this, but there already is a version of UNIX running on MVS, and it has been around for a few years now. Its called MVS/Open Edition, and the API is quite public. Any portabilty issues could (in theory) be addressed on that platform.
However, IBM's Linux strategy does make a lot of sense. As you correctly pointed out, the portability will indeed improve, if what they are trying to do is port a Linux application from one platform to another Linux platform.
Admittedly, most of the programming world is far more familiar with TCP/IP. But this is not an argument for getting rid of SNA. SNA was developed and optimized for the mainframe architecture, and there is no doubt that it does what it needs to do extremely well.
The argument for knocking off of SNA would be if TCP/IP is shown to have superior performance characteristics than SNA - something which is not the case. The protocol is indeed proprietary (which is bad), but it is not screwed up. You seemed to have made that statement solely because you, personally, are unfamiliar with SNA.
And as another poster has pointed out, TCP/IP on IBM mainframes does exist, and has existed for quite some time.
Coca-Cola is not a means to an end like software is. You need driver software to run hardware. Without the software, your hardware is pretty much useless. Charging for drivers is valid only if it goes into the production cost of the hardware. Or, in other words, if the driver is provided with the hardware when you buy it. Charging for the source of the drivers is absolutely unjustified.
In this scheme of things, one cannot really draw an analogy with Coca-Cola. But let me give it a try. Imagine that every soft-drink can only be drunk with a special straw that is dependant on the formula of the drink. Some soft-drink manufacturers provide the straw which will enable you to drink their product. Others dont, but provide you with enough info to make / buy a suitable straw. Coca-Cola on the other hand will sell their products to anyone, but will sell straws only to bug-eyed aliens from Mars, and absolutely refuses to provide info on which straws to buy, or how to make a suitable straw. Is this situation acceptable? I think not!
Well, in that case, I must say that Debian's quality isnt as good as it is claimed to be. I have downloaded and installed broken packages from unstable. The number of bugs in unstable is definitely much more than in the stable release. I think this observation is more consistent with treating this distribution as not-quite release-worthy rather than as a frequently updated release.
In other words, while it may be true that "unstable" gets frequently updated, I dont think that is the reason for its name.
Thank you for that tidbit about an "experimental" distro. I must have missed that on debian-devel...
However, your defense of Debian is predicated on your opinion that it is targetted towards the Sysadmin. This, I am not so sure about. For example, a while ago, it was touted that Debian provides a complete SGML solution. The wording of the announcement was such that it gave the idea : if you want SGML - use Debian!
To, my mind, this changes the picture. Debian is no longer targetting sysadmins. It is also targetting ordinary users of systems. Things like GNOME are end-user frills - rarely does a sysadmin need a desktop environment.
Furthermore, it can be argued that sysadmins who are so stringent about stability should be preferring well established and mature OS's like AIX, or OS/400 or VMS or MVS. Why choose a newbie on the software landscape in the first place if stability is that much of a concern?
Ever get the feeling that waiting for a Debian release is like waiting for Rip Van Winkle to wake up? It'll happen - just not on a timescale you are accustomed to.
The there are two excuses for this delay that are often quoted (1) Debian has a better quality (2) Debian is not behind other distribution in terms of software versions since people can always download from unstable. Make no mistake - these are excuses and not reasons, and let me explain why.
1. Better quality : Quality is always a tradeoff against time to release. Redhat, IIRC release their first distro with a 2.2 kernel somewhere around June. Sure they had bugs, but assuming that Redhat tripled their QA efforts, in order to improve stability and security, they would still have delayed by possibly another two months. Even Slackware, which has a much better reputation than Redhat, was able to beat Debian handily.
Lets face the facts folks, the Debian organization is just slower. Some of this slowness may be attributable to quality. Most of it is not.
A glaring example of this slowness was seen recently : look at when the Y2K compliance release was released.
2. Latest software from unstable : Hah! Are the Debian people who spout this nonsense contending that a distribution labelled as "unstable" is release quality? If so, then release it.
1. I think you are using percentages in a misleading way. A change from 1 to 6 users is a 500% gain. But is it really as significant as a gain from 10000 to 30000 (200% gain) users? The gain quoted in the second case might be sufficient to make the difference between a red bottomline and a black one. The first gain, probably wont make a difference.
2. I never said that the PC was responsible for creating the net. Read my comment again : it talks about the explosion in the user-base of the internet.
If that was available in NT - Why would any NT shop bother to do the switch?
But "shop" switching is a user-community switching - not developer switching - especially if we are talking about NT. My comment was about the reasons why the developer community showed a preference to Linux - thereby causing a user community expansion.
First of all, get your facts straight : gcc is not proprietary.
Secondly, the *BSD's do have a choice. Nobody forced them to use GCC. They always have the option of writing a compiler with the BSD license. The fact that none of the compiler writers have done so speaks for the popularity of the BSD license.
I definitely agree that most of the internet runs on UNIX. But the reason for the popularity of the internet, and the equipment used to run it are two different things. Just consider that the internet has been around for nearly three decades. The only people using it then were in the R&D establishments and academia. And this did not constitute much of a user-base and therefore, things like online shopping wouldnt really have clicked (pardon the pun).
With the advent of the PC and PC-based internet clients, however, the user base changed significantly. The user base of the internet today has become almost synonymous with the user-base of PC's. The huge PC revolution thus is directly responsible for the huge expansion in the popularity of the internet.
You missed out the most important reason : the BSD licence.
Think about it : the Linux developers are just as smart as the BSD developers. The BSD movement also had the advantage that they were a mature operating system at the time Linux was a blip on the horizon. So why didnt the BSD movement gain as many developers as Linux did? Simply because the license was unattractive to them.
Some people also say that the centralized committee nature of BSD is a detractment. Bosh! Linux also has the same committee nature where a patch doesnt appear in a distribution unless it has been blessed by the core developers and / or Linus. The only difference is that this committee is not as formalized as the *BSD committees.
No offense, but didnt you read the article? The point was not that BSD is superior or inferior to Linux. It was that fewer people are contributing to it.
Yes, applications written for Linux may run on BSD and vice-versa. But the catch really is the license. If NT were as stable as *BSD or Linux, do you think that the development community would switch over to NT? No way - and this is because of the license.
Note that the user community might switch over - but that isnt the point. When we talk of contributions, its the development community that we are talking about.Now, if the BSD license was changed to make a closed source distribution impossible, then you would see contributions increasing tremendously.
PS : The story to which we are commenting is a bit confused in that the writer is unable to distinguish between the development community and the user community. Linux achieved a bigger user community because of features provided by a bigger development community.
Hah!
Now if only Debian would have a faster release cycle for stable software instead of having us wait over a year past the time that other vendors release code.
I can see it now : in Feb '00 the 2.4 kernel is out. By March '00 major vendors have started to release products which include the 2.4 kernel. By May '00, the releases will have stabilized. Meanwhile, in Jan '00, Debian announces with great fanfare that a code freeze for their release with the 2.2 kernel. And by March '00 (probably) they will have released Potato.
Or am I being too optimistic?
Very interesting.
Nevertheless, rocket technology is but one area that makes up a mission. Sensor technology, the control systems, mission objectives are all more complex today that in the '60s.
To be sure, the technology in the '60s involved systems that were far less complex than today's systems. When you try to do more (today), your confidence level will go down.
You may be right - but in that case you are not talking about the first instance where such technology was used. The Ranger missions (which were the first missions to get any kind of surface data back from the moon) were designed to crash into the lunar surface. Just a few seconds before impact the cameras would switch on, photograph the lunar surface and transmitting the data. The craft and camera was not expected to survive impact.
This was in a time when noone had any idea of what the lunar surface looked like from close up. The gathering of seismic data came much later.
History records that the first 5 (or was it 6?) Ranger missions were complete failures. For various reasons, the cameras failed to turn on before impact. Finally, with their necks on the chopping block, Ranger 6 (or maybe 7) did manage to send back some pictures.
Note that rockets and lunar landings in those days were very much experimental technology, and so one can (with hindsight) forgive the Ranger mission designers for the first five (or six) failures. This is in contrast to todays goof ups (the Hubble and the recent metric conversion fiasco come to mind), where NASA indeed should have performed better.
The publicly stated reason for closing new-maintainers was so that existing packages could be maintained better (did I get that right?). Are things any better now? It seems to me to be a non-sequitor that you can improve the maintainance of existing packages by preventing new people from joining - but maybe I am missing something here. At what point will you decide that packages are being maintained well enough so that new maintainers can be reopened? Couldnt whatever course of actions that you took upon closing new-maintainers also have been executed with new-maintainers still open?
Its all very well of you to say so. Of course you are probably one of the Debian members who voted to decide that new members should not be admitted to Debian right now. Pray tell us, if you expect us to contribute, why we cant be provided the same facilities you enjoy?
Really?
Well, explain to me then how Suse accomplished this feat? Their kernel comes with sound enabled.
What do you mean by "traditional sense"? The traditional sense of the word "Free", or traditional sense of the word "Freedom"? Because, the "Free" meaning doesnt make sense in the context of the GPL or the BSD license. So, if it is freedom that you are referring to, there really is nothing confusing about this term.
I would really like to understand the point of view of the BSD license advocates who state that the BSD license provides more freedom than the GPL. From what I see, Stallman is right : the BSD license actually sacrifices the freedom of the programmer to give some freedom to the entrepreneur. I dont have a problem with entrepreneurs - they do have an important place in society. But if I spend time on writing software, I do not want to sacrifice my freedoms to provide the entrepeneur some freedom. He is free to use software that I write - but on the same freedom footing. And this is exactly what the GPL provides.
I dont think so. The average buyer will only care about two things :
Price
A good household name that they can recognize
The average buyer has no clue about performance and will believe the FUD that is shouted the loudest.
Debian is a democracy of sorts, but is a democracy of developers (in the broad sense of the word - people who actively contribute to Debian's development - be it as maintainers, technical writers or submitters of useful bug reports).
>>Would I then have the "right" to "judge"?
I, like my fellow developers, welcome opinions of people interested in Debian, but ultimately what really counts are contributions. I've read one "dselect sucks" too many from people who aren't willing to work on it (or even just give constructive criticism).
I have in the past submitted patches to debian packages, one of which was acknowledged by the developer (who then promptly disappeared out of sight), and incorporated by none. So, yes, I speak from experience.
In the case of the developer who disappeared out of sight, I later sent him mail offering to take over maintaining his package, but I received no response, and his package continues to languish. (If you want more details, you can email me.)
I've sent mail to the wnpp address regarding packages that I would have liked to adopt. I did receive one response. This did not contain all the info I needed, and later queries vanished into some mail-blackhole that exists on the Debian servers. The information on the wnpp page itself is inconsistent - I've seen packages for which the wnpp page listed one maintainer, the bug reports page listed another, and the package page indicated another. But I digress....
The point that I am trying to make is that (1) My opinion is just as relevant as yours and (2) The current setup of Debian makes it hard for my opinion to be accepted as being as relevant as yours.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that a leader must be authoritarian in nature. Not so. They may wield authority, but that does not made them authoritarian (not in the pejorative sense that you use the word for). For example, I read the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup which is moderated by 6 people. But nobody is rebelling against the moderators claiming that they are stiffling discussion or whatever. Linus is an authority, but the kernel developers accept that without any problem. I could make the same statement about several other developers (just in case you reply that Linus is an exception).
I am still of the opinion that a closed list serves no useful purpose for Debian. The analogy that you make (black budgets and so on), do not fit in. Can Debian punish its developers for revealing what goes on in debian-private? If not, how can you prevent the "secrets" that you discuss there from leaking out to other companies. In fact the example you quoted about Corel falls apart if you take into consideration that there may be employees of Corel who are debian developers, and therefore have access to debian-private. So what exactly have you gained?
I wasnt aware that this had been tried before. However, it may be that the circumstances were different before, and it is time to try this experiment again with the benefit of previous experiences.
Regarding the flamewars :
Who are you to judge? Personally, I'll start worrying the day there isn't a flamewar on the development list, because it'll mean that people have stopped caring.
Two points : Are you off the opinion that because I am not a developer, that my opinion isnt important? What if I were a developer? Would I then have the "right" to "judge"? What is it that makes your judgement superior to mine?
The second thing is that I feel your conclusion is incorrect. No flamewars on lists could mean that (a) Proper arbitration of arguments is being done or (b) People have become politer or (c) People do not care anymore. I dont see why it only has to be (c). In fact, look at the moderated newsgroups on the net. They dont have flamewars and they dont seem to be dying out either.
Why is it you're not publishing all your email on the web? Why is it you don't have a couple of webcams in your bedroom and bathroom?
This is a truly specious argument on your part. My life is not open to the public, and I never claim so. Debian, on the other hand supposedly welcomes the public to participate.
Dont get me wrong : I think Debian is the best distribution around. But the problems that they have been experiencing seems to offset some of the quality benefits that they provide.
What are these problem?
1. A formless decision making process which takes really long to make any decision. I feel that they really need a leader figure with the authority to arbitrate over any decision that is getting prolonged. This leader can be democratically elected or can be anyone who is accepted by the developers.
Some of the consequences of this problem has been (a) A lag in the versions of the kernels and associated programs that they have released (b) An incapacity to set (or meet when set) internal deadlines (c) Raging flamewars on the developer lists which contribute little or nothing to free software. (d) An inablility to get rid of people who are more of a millstone than a help - for example, developers who dont respond to queries / bug reports about their package or do not update their packages from upstream. These packages could probably have better support if they were just orphaned or listed as unmaintained.
2. Openness : Debian prides itself on being open, and indeed, it is more open than other distributions since almost all of their mailing lists are open to the public for scrutiny.
This openness, however, is relative. There is atleast one private list which non-developers cant read. I question the necessity for existence of this list. What is it that Debian needs to discuss behind closed doors that it cannot discuss in the public eye, since Debian itself is not a commercial organization? Witness the recent uproar over the non-admission of new developers which was discussed on debian-private. Did it help that this discussion was totally hidden from the general public? All it did was convince the general public that there is some unofficial policy being implemented to not allow new developers - all denials to the contrary.
Just my two cents....
...because I sure didnt see it in his article.
To quote from the article :
"First, the idea of replacing X. Recently there have been several groups making claims that they are creating a new windowing system that will take the place of X. There are cries of "modularity" (see Linus Torvalds' commentary on modularity and why it is flaky). There are cries of "Let's create a new system!" And mainly these cries are just that. There is really no reason to replace X."
What the author goes on to say is that X is an existing standard, so we should not bring up a competing standard but choose to work on the existing standard. It seems to me that he hasnt really addressed the question of whats wrong with the competing standards. What were Linus' comments about modularity, and how do they apply to X's competitors? Why is Berlin bad (according the the author)? I was hoping for information in the article and just got a rant.
Again, later in his article, he rants on about development tailored to PC's. Fragmentation of a standard is a bad idea, but again, I'm sure there is a plus side to what these developers do (or else they wouldnt do it). The author has not addressed the question of what these plus points are, and why they are just not worth it. Can someone enlighten me?