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Brad Laue wrote: |
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> Debian may be stable, but Woody's sheer age really does indicate that |
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> something is wrong with their development model. I don't imagine |
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> suggesting a faster paced release model to their core developers would |
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> be met with much openness, nor would it be put to a vote. FreeBSD and |
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> RedHat, to name two, have live package build systems (ports/rawhide |
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> respectively) and cut a release from these every four months on the dot |
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> with impeccable QA. I don't think I could suggest such a thing to Debian |
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> developers without being laughed out of the discussion. |
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> |
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My impression is that the paralysis we've all seen in the Debian |
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community is due to two factors: 1) ridiculously inflexible rules |
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regarding free vs. non-free software and 2) a |
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we're-the-best-and-don't-need-to-change attitude. I've seen long and |
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apparently serious discussions on the Debian lists over whether gcc |
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should be removed from the main distro because the man pages aren't |
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released under a "free" license. I've seen hundreds (who knows, |
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thousands?) of posts describing problems with apt-get and deselect |
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dismissed cavilierly. In my opinion THAT is what's killing Debian - the |
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inability to distinguish worthwhile questions from intellectual |
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masturbation and the unwillingness to accept criticism. I don't see |
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either of these elements present in Gentoo now, and I don't see zhen's |
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proposals changing that. |
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As for the long time between Debian releases, it seems to me that trying |
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to support 10,000 packages on 11 architectures with "rock-solid |
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stability" is a big part of that. Again, I don't see anything in zhen's |
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proposal on that order of magnitude. Certainly, asking one attendee of |
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a meeting to dump a log to the website isn't going to slow development. |
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Heck, the glacial pace of Debian releases wouldn't even be a problem if |
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their upgrade system was robust. "Install the old version, then run |
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apt-get upgrade repeatedly until the conflicts go away" isn't |
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acceptable. Again, Gentoo does not suffer from this problem - it's |
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essentially a releaseless distro. |
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-- |
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Stephen C. Martin |
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PGP/GnuPG key 1024D/8C4FCA5D |
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-- |
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