Ian's POV, Debian Project Success?
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| vainrveenr Mar 20, 2007 9:16 AM EDT |
Charles Babcock published a nice article less than two months ago on Information Week entitled 'How To Tell The Open Source Winners From The Losers', found at http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessi...
This Information Week article definitely sheds some light on Ian Murdock's comments regarding his perceived success of Debian GNU/Linux -- or as it were, his perceived failure of Debian. A nine-point tick-tack-toe checklist of some of the major points of the Information Week article can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjasay/378550703/ and a straight list of the same at http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/unix/bsd/archives/how-to-spot-a-s... Here is the basic checklist: 1. A thriving community 2. Transparency 3. Employed developers 4. Disruptive goals 5. Civility 6. A clear license 7. A benevolent dictator 8. Documentation 9. Commercial support I believe that Ian in the Linux Format interview directly addresses many of these points. 1. The Debian developer-community is definitely thriving. The Etch installer R2 is out, and the full Etch release is coming out soon, but much-too-delayed (as others have remarked upon *very* strongly all over the place!) See also the first two paragraphs of Ian's response in the interview on this point. 2. Ian's response to LXF's "Do you think that's a failure of the process, though, or a particular failing of Debian?...." is that he thinks the Debian development process is -- if anything -- almost *TOO* transparent. 3. Hinted-at that developers are employed; DuncTank project was unsuccessful. As Ian writes "there is almost a prediction among certain developers that it's never going to work because you've introduced money into the equation with the DuncTank project and that it's doomed to fail" 4. Ian writes in his response to Ubuntu inquiry "One has to remember how completely groundbreaking Debian was. This whole idea of open development, distributed development... it was a model that Debian truly pioneered. Linux really pioneered it, but Debian was the first attempt to explicitly build something this way." He then goes on to describe how Ubuntu has now laid claim to the distro that is most enacting disruptive goals. As he writes it "Are there things that Debian can learn from Ubuntu and the extraordinary uptake that it has seen and frankly all the things that it is getting right? Absolutely. I think that's the single biggest positive impact of Ubuntu." 5. Hinted at in Ian's second paragraph of his response "passive aggressive actions by those same developers to make sure that their prediction comes true - that sort of exposes the worst part of the open source development process". ...... i.e., *most probably* some flaming and incivility! 6. Ian does not comment on a clear license in this interview, as far as GPL2 vs GPL3 or including open-source vs. closed-source binaries. 7. Ian writes "I think the fundamental mistake [of Debian] was this adoption of a democratic process, which happened after my time and I was opposed to." In fact, Ian's overall point of the Linux Format interview is that a major failure of Debian has been its NOT having a benevolent dictator! Most telling on this are Ian's comments to the LXF question "You were against it ?" (against the democratic process). See the few paragraphs of Ian's response to this. ...and yet Ian *does* address the current state of Debian leadership. As he writes "You know, I've been pleased with the current leadership at Debian: I think Anthony Towns has done a very good job and certainly hasn't been afraid to make unpopular decisions; DuncTank being one example. At this point it is more of an institutional problem. Hopefully the strong leadership will continue." 8. and 9. Not much from Ian here directly regarding Documentation and Commercial Support. Ian does remark that Debian is one of the three big successful distros worldwide, insofar as it has been used by itself and as part of Ubuntu and other distros. Ian addresses points 1-2, 4 and 7 most of all, as far as his views regarding the current success of Debian. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!