[modular-debian] Re: Sad day for Debian and F/LOSS

  • From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: modular-debian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 00:38:07 -0500

Marty wrote:

On 11/19/2014 01:28 AM, Steve Litt wrote:

On Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:56:50 -0800
Mike Bird <mgb-debian@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


DD's decided "General Resolution is not required".

This transforms Debian from being a leading distro of the
world's leading O/S to a playground like Gnome and KDE.

The DD's are volunteers and they certainly have the right
to do this.  But still it's a sad day for Debian and for
Linux and for F/LOSS.


OK, so by now we all know this for a fact, and thanks to Mike for
forwarding the email.

This doesn't really change much. I see three areas of changes:

1) Our escape deadline just got sooner.

2) If you're anything like me, this was the final straw as far as
    trust of or affinity for Debian is concerned. What I started out
    regarding as a mere technical mistake I now regard as evidence of a
    bad organization. To the best of my ability, I will never use
    Debian again. If I need to have a systemd distro in a VM to run that
    one piece of software my next distro or OS doesn't run, it will be
    Ubuntu or something non-Debian.


I know how you feel, but I don't think they are a bad organization,
just a human one.


3) Now we know *exactly* where we stand, and can plan for it,
    presumably without the ever-looming threat of further RedHat
    Poettering welded in replacements for programs we've used for years.
    Knowing exactly where we stand is actually an improvement: We
    needn't worry about what follows Jessie.
We know with better statistical precision, but it still tells us what we already knew, that Debian (like the wider Linux community) is deeply divided. 


So now all of us, in our own ways, have to move pretty fast. What works
for me won't work for Marty, and what works for Marty won't work for
Joel Rees, whose solution won't work for Joel Roth, on and on. We can,
and actually must in order to get ourselves out of this, help each
other achieve our best solutions, and learn about each others'
solutions.


In addition to that I would like to hear from more DD's about how we
can help keep Debian modular. They are the ones who know where the
bodies are buried, and where the help is most needed.
You know, it's just late enough, and I'm just tired enough to venture a radical thought: The whole notion of Debian Developers strikes me as deeply flawed. With the exception of the installer and the packaging system, DDs really don't do any actual development, they do packaging. And the fact that the packagers have taken over the technical direction of Linux strikes me as the lunatics taking over the asylum.
As a matter of general philosophy, the real work and progress comes from those who develop the kernel, those who develop tools (e.g. the gnu folks), and those who develop upstream applications -- packaging is purely a convenience for end users. Packagers are middlemen, and when the middlemen start making life hard for those who develop, and those who use software, things have just gotten baroque, if not insane. 

Somehow, it seems time to get back to fundamentals.
I'm not exactly sure what that means, but maybe it means leaving the notion of packaging behind (sort of what gobolinux and guix seem to be doing, and certainly what LFS does). 

I think I'll put on my flame-retardant PJs and hide under the covers now.

Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra

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