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On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Frank Peters <frank.peters@×××××××.net> |
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> wrote: |
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> > |
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> > FOSS developers have to maintain an awareness that there is no One True |
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> > Way. A computer has always been and always will be a general purpose |
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> machine. |
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> > Therefore, the only rational philosophy for OS development is for an OS |
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> > to empower the user to apply this generality for his own needs. |
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> > |
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> |
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> You're basically arguing that if somebody putting together an OS has a |
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> working solution for something, they should spend just as much effort |
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> maintaining 3 other solutions for that something, and ensure that none |
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> of the solutions becomes any better than the others. OpenRC and |
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> Portage should work just as well with only csh installed as it does |
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> with bash installed, etc. |
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> |
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No. Just no. If somebody is putting together an OS, they maintain the |
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interfaces / APIs that applications on top would use. That's all. If one |
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solution for, say, package managers or daemon startup works better than |
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another, so be it. It's not the responsibility of the Kernel / OS |
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developer, unless some application reveals a bug that others do not. Other |
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than that, pick the package manager / initializer / etc. that works best |
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for YOU. |
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> |
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> That just isn't realistic. |
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The above scenario is ABSOLUTELY realistic, and the way it should work. |
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The straw man you've created above, not so much. But it's just a straw man. |
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> Most distros would rather support 47 |
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> features that users want, and not 3 features implemented 5 different |
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> ways each in a manner that is completely interchangeable. If a distro |
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> did things the way you wanted, very few would bother to use it, and |
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> likely fewer would bother to maintain it. |
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> |
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But isn't that the point of Gentoo in the first place? You're selecting |
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packages for various functions that are typically source compatible, and |
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you compile them yourself. How many text editors can you choose from? How |
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many cron implementations? How many development languages and libraries? |
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How many email servers and clients? What would happen if the maintainers |
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decided Gentoo should only support one desktop environment, one shell, one |
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option for everything? Would emacs users look elsewhere because only VI is |
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available in Portage? I suspect so. |
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The beauty of Gentoo is that even options not available from official |
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sources can be integrated with either an overlay, your own ebuild, or even |
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just building from source. |
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> You'll always have alternative solutions in FOSS because volunteers |
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> will work on things that interest them. Even after 99% of everything |
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> supports systemd exclusively you'll still find people writing sysvinit |
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> implementations from scratch in Ruby, just for the fun of it. |
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> However, you'll never find those alternative solutions receiving |
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> mainstream support, unless one actually tips the scale to the point |
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> where it is considered an equal. Heck, look at postgres - most would |
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> say that it is superior to mysql in many ways and yet many packages |
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> still don't support it. |
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> |
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Ah - but au contraire. For that type of thing, it is very rare that any |
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application that needs a relational database can't be plugged into |
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postgresql through some mechanism or another. Sure, server-specific |
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support packages don't (phpmyadmin won't work with it any more than pgAdmin |
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will work with MySQL), but out side of that, you will find very few |
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applications that have a hard dependency on a specific relational |
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database. That's the kind of thing that Oracle does. Even though they now |
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own MySQL, you still can't run Oracle's PeopleSoft on top of it - you need |
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Oracle 11g or whatever. |
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> Nothing is preventing you from starting a "Foundation for Redundant |
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> Solutions" - with the express aim of maintaining all the stuff nobody |
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> uses any longer. I can't imagine you'll get a lot of donations - even |
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> if people might agree with you philosophically at some level, they're |
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> going to want to spend their money investing in stuff they actually |
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> use. |
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> |
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Before all these deep dependencies on borked does-it-all-but-nothing-well |
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solutions like Pulse Audio and systemd came along, we used to call that |
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Foundation "The Open Source Community". |
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> |
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> -- |
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> Rich |
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> |
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> |
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|
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Harry Holt, PMP |
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Cyber Architect |
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Social Media Strategist |