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82 Comments
- groggyboy, on 10/12/2007, -19/+69Geez. Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the Debian crew sounds like a bunch of whiners? Every time they get in the news, they are whining about something. Last time they were pitching a fit over Firefox (Iceweasel? Really?!?). This time, it seems they're gonna go sulk and let Etch stagnate just because a couple of volunteers are getting paid. "Its so unfair! Waah waah waah! Boohoo!" Oh grow up, you sissies.
- demonsofgoetia, on 10/12/2007, -6/+39Disgruntled Debian Developers Delay, eh?
Undulating Unicorns Unify Under Ubuntu Umbrellas! - simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -9/+34It's really easy to make cheap shot comments, huh?
I doubt you're a talented programmer who could even work on an OS, I bet you know a lot about how much they have to do, and only the what... the manager, gets paid. That's pretty *****.
I would feel kind of crapped on if only the guy planning was getting all the money, and me writting all the code gets nothing.
I would also prefer my manager made no money if I was making no money.
That's just my 'whining' opinion though. - clearzen, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26@groggyboy
It seems to me if they choose to devote their time for *free* then they can be as picky as they choose concerning how much they contribute to development. - rembot, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24wonder how long it will take Mark Shuttleworth to ask them to join the Ubuntu team, lol.
- thcobbs, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19@simpleid
True that the debian guys may be talented. But if you've ever read through some of the lesser known sections of the kernel code, you wouldn't be making the claim that it takes talented people to work on an OS.
Hell, I do it on a daily basis... And I'm sure as hell not a talented programmer. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9yeah, why try to stop debian working as it does for years, by contributors from the web that donate free time. distributions like ubuntu owe their existence to that model and distros like mandrake/mandriva have been destroyed by businesses trying to strictly control them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16No, it doesn't have to, it's just been made into one by the media.
- lpcustom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Debian is still on par with Red Hat and SuSE. Debian has 4 branches to it's release(stable, testing, unstable, and experimental). Stable is the "release" version, which pretty much just means that it doesn't get updated very often and that it's rock solid. What Debian considers stable is far beyond what most distros consider stable. Debian unstable is a good comparison to Ubuntu.
SuSE and Red Hat are a different business model than Debian. They are commercial releases. They have funds to pay their developers with, and still I see Debian "on par" with them. All the Ubuntu lovers(I'm one I'll admit) should try out Debian unstable if they think Debian is dieing. Actually if any of you think Debian is dieing, try unstable. Then notice when you when you do your update and upgrade how many packages are updated daily. - motang, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11dude this sucks, I have been waiting for 4.0 to come out so that I can install that on my personal server. Hopefully it will see the light of day soon.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9because i know most won't read TFA:
"It appears that these developers have pulled back from working on Debian because of their objections to Barth and fellow release manager, Steve Langasek, being paid to work on Debian by the Dunc-Tank.org" - burke, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9They don't have the exact same setup. They have two logos. The swirl is free to use. Their "official logo" (the one you never see) is a swirl and a genie bottle.
Please inform yourself before making scathing remarks, "douchebag". - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10basically, don't be surprised some of you that didn't have an idea about the passion of debian with keeping it 'real' with the gpl licence. while i have taken aback in the past about such strict practices, i do use debian and i realize it's a reason of its solid appearance. we have seen 'products' such as mandrake being destroyed because some business was tightly controlling it.
debian tries to be what the linux operating system is in the largest part based on: a result of the co-operation of internet volunteers. - mgajda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6While they have right to do whatever they please,
their counter-productive attitude makes the Debian project infamous.
I divide people into distinct categories:
1. Those that want to get things done.
2. Those that hurt the first kind. - Grimboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Two things regarding your second paragraph:
1. You have suggested a common way of thinking about developers as the rock bottom rank, the grunts, the hordes of typists. You say "Frankly, that sort of attitude will keep you stuck as a developer for a long time", so you think that the main objective of developers it to become promoted to managers. Just go read Joel on Software now. The article about a software company being a ship is a good one.
2. Manager is little bit generic. Lots of people don't like managers who aren't also developers. This is with good reason. There isn't a whole lot of managing to do and you can't do some of it if you aren't a developer. Managers who aren't developers don't only have a neutral effect (not taking into account wages), they are often counter-productive due to them trying to assert their power by making stupid uninformed decisions (see: dilbert). I have a hard time believing debian is like this but this is probably what the other posters think of when they hear manager.
In conclusion it seems you think that manager is like a "code architect" or a highly skilled developer that also makes sure the code monkeys below him don't step out of line rather than a suit or a sales droid. If this is the sort of situation you are talking about then I'm inclined to agree with your conclusions but don't assume that all software projects are structured the same. - epohs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6After reading the position statement, it really does seem somewhat petty.
- stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Debian is full of politics. Always been this way. Just check out some of the fights on the mailing lists. Bleh.
- macewan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9OK, so again it's late. It's not as if this was strange or unusual for Debian. Over the years this has come to be expected. Before I switched to Ubuntu I used Debian. Not because because it had swift release times, not at all, but because of what it represented. I kept breaking this by testing bleeding edge and eventually jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon when it came to town.
I just do not see Debian with release schedules that are met because there are just too many factors. This time it was the human factor. - pllb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Debian dying? That's funny, debian is one of the oldest distros out there. First release was 1994 if I'm not mistaken and it is still one of the most used distros today. Also, people should really stop complaining and saying it's outdated. Debian stable is just as the name implies, stable. It's not meant to be cutting edge, but rather ideal for production servers where you don't want to be bothered with buggy packages. If you want newer versions of packages checkout backports, its lovely. If you want to live more on the edge use unstable mixed with experiemental, I've been using this combo on my desktop for years without a problem.
- dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6 I get a kick out of this on the dunc-tank.org website: "As our first (and maybe only) project, we're trying to help the release of etch happen on time."
Oh the irony! - burke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I haven't been following this issue, but I wouldn't be so quick to call back on the iceweasel episode.
The problem was that every single byte contained on the Debian standard distribution is supposed to be completely free. The firefox logo is not. Debian decided they'd use their own logo for firefox, but retain the original name. This went well, until all of a sudden a year or so later, mozilla took issue with this, and told them to use the logo too.
They can't. That would totally destroy the whole point of debian linux. So what do they do? They do a fork. Except it's not really a fork, it's just a rebranding. Iceweasel.
What happened with this, anyway? I haven't followed it since the argument erupted.
Oh, and by the way, a lot of people like to point out that Debian's logo itself is non-free in the same way as Firefox's. This is true. The Debian administration consider it a bug. However, what many people do not know, is that this copyrighted logo is the rarely-seen "official" logo, with a genie bottle below the swirl. The swirl is free to use in any way you see fit.
EDIT: Should have been under groggyboy's post. Sorry. - blueZhift, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's really too bad, but it seems that once money of almost any kind enters the picture, everything changes. What happened to coding for the love of the craft? Not that that love doesn't still exist, but if it does, why should it matter to anyone whether or not some other developer on a volunteer project is being paid? This begins to look more and more like Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
If Microsoft really wants to kill Linux, it looks like all they need to do is start randomly and publicly paying people to work on it. The ensuing jealousy would rip it to shreds, with no laws broken! They can just claim to be paying people to work on better interoperability with Windows. - rmxz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Parent wrote "... need a payraise".
That's exactly the problem. You've now got a subset of Debian guys motivated by money, and the rest of them still motivated by making a quality Linux distribution. Sometimes those interests are aligned (as the guys who set up dunc-tank observed) but sometimes those interests are NOT (as the guys who started Caldera and Novell now see when Microsoft can easily use the motivated-by-money lever to change the course of the projects).
IMHO, Debian should stay Debian - and stay as far away from money and paid work as possible -- and let organziations like Ubuntu build the corporate bureacracy stuff like release schedules, support contracts, etc. I hope Ubuntu buys dunc-tank.org and takes those employees with them -- because they and their work are useful for corporate marketing -- but do more harm than good to Debian development. - burke, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@zugu:
I believe you're the idiot. Firefox's logo is non-free, and Debian can't include it as a matter of principle. Granted, they obviously weren't happy about the idea of Mozilla signing off on all patches, but the logo was the dealbreaker. It contradicts the DFSG. - anglachel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Fifteen years are insignificant compared to the software industry as a whole. Don't be too excited yet."
Yeah... cause the software industry has been around how long?
Microsoft founded in ... '75 so ~30 years... Half is insignificant...
Linux will not collapse upon it self any more then Vista will flop.
Linux may have it's ups and Downs I'm sure there is ***** like this (not identical mind you because Probably every one in MS gets paid.) but you don't hear about it because we Microsoft doesn't have public forums where stuff like this is discussed, MS doesn't have the world looking at their internal documents (most of the time) and we don't get copies of the internal memo's for MS, we do for Debian. - taxonimous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It is a shame this happened but I am sure it will get worked out somehow. What large project with many people doesn't have speed bumps? I guess they need to start by looking at the way they are rewarding some people while others are left feeling neglected ...
- dchaosdx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3hooray @ alliteration
- anglachel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3is this one of those things like elected officials where we say that the extra money is to prevent them from taking bribes?
Valid point though, maybe we should pay Linux Dev's in ramen rather then cash... - cynicist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Oh but in the defense of the developers, $6000 is way more than I need to cover expenses for a month...
- anglachel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@naio21: I hardly consider IBM manufacturing punch card machines, and Browning automatic assault rifles part of the "Software Industry"
Heck I hardly consider old school IBM part of the software industry at all.. they were all hardware up until the 80's... And even if you look at mainframes, and general purpose computing as a whole, you can only go back the the 60's... And if you going back that far, then we can include the old school open source movement... it wasn't called that back then... but there was a free software movement it the early days of computing.
and just for the record 1970 to 2006 = 36 years
15/36 = 41.7% is not insignificant.
ENIAC was 1946 it ran off vacuum tubes. leaves us as slightly under a third of the time since the first vacuum tube machine was up and running, a third is still not insignificant.
Even if we consider IBM manufacturing punch cards machines as software, and we round up to your century (really ~90 years they've been operating as IBM) it is still 15%, might not be as big as the numbers when we look at the world of Modern software design, but still not the less then 5% you'd need to even make an argument that it is insignificant.
Sorry for the rant, but don't belittle time until you realize just how new computers really are to the world, 10 years is a long time, 15-20 is an eternity, and 30+ years is a software company that has been around the block a few times, and probably reinvented it self a few times in order to keep going. - zoom1928, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2tshrub, Slackware isn't the oldest. Not by a long shot. Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was out and popular a year before Patrick Volkerding ripped-off SLS by making a few changes and calling it Slackware. He used the fear of ELF binaries to push Slackware, and many people are still very angry at Volkerding for doing that crap.
- bloobloo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2According to http://blogs.turmzimmer.net/2006/12/18#20061211
"Update: There are media rumours floating around that "[Etch has] been delayed because some developers have deliberately slowed down their work". This doesn't reflect what I said.
I just noted that the dunc-tank experiment has positive and negative effects, and we shouldn't watch only one side - whichever that side is. The reasons for the release being delayed from the original planned date has other reasons, please read the mails on debian-devel-announce for details (also all linked on http://release.debian.org/). And, I'm quite happy with the involvement of most Developers in the release. (And this paragraph isn't part of what this blog posting should be about really, but as it is cited, it is still here ...) " - neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've been using testing/unstable for ages now. Despite the name, it's very stable.
Just install, set your apt sources.list to point to "etch", and when it's declared "stable", you'll continue to track it.
Conversely, I keep my sources pointed to "testing", because I want to keep access to recent packages, even after Etch is released. - tropican8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm. Lots of interesting comments. The important thing with Debian is that everyone has their own views and ways of doing things, while still all having the goal to create a free OS. These disagreements are important. Unlike a distribution such as SuSE, there's no company making all the big decisions. Its important that when something like this comes up, everyone takes a strong stance and eventually everything gets worked out. The worry is, at least for me, that eventually the Debian developers will be so strung out over their differences that they won't have enough energy left to actually come to an agreement. This would probably be helped by the "Linux Media" turning such debates in the community into a parody.
- GnuTzu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@netdroid9,
That makes sense, and now I feel like a sucker for buying into the media hype.
We have to remember that an open environment makes everything public, and media vultures--particularly those that are out to critisize open source--will build anything they can into a news event. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+12Yeah, right.
This castle of cards that is steadly growing for more than 15 years, being used and supported by many big corporations.
It will fall anytime now, sure.
In your dreams, M$ fanboy. - Burmask, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I thought open source development was about community and giving back. If some people are selling out then let them. However, don't let them water-down the movement.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Meh. Debian releases are *always* late; it's just a feature. :o)
IMHO it's really a small price to pay for the two things that Debian guarantees better (or arguably: at all) over any other distro out there
1) It will always be 100% free (in both senses of the word) because it has a rock-solid social contract. All the other distros out there are very much at the mercy of corporate whims, just look at the SuSe debacle, RedHat has the restricted "corporate" edition, and even Ubuntu won't be doing so well it Canonical tanks. This is the primary reason that I use Debian; it pretty much guarantees that it will never "die", development may slow down and stagnate, but it can't fall prey to bankruptcy or legal threats. (for this reason; I think I actually agree with the objections to Dunc-Tank; money is good, but I think that specifically attaching some sort of financing to the Official Debian project is contrary to it's goals. 3rd party bounties: yes. Dunc-Tank: no)
2) absolute stability. Especially for servers that may measure their uptime in years rather than days or hours, this is extremely important, far moreso than cutting edge tech. Even for the desktop market, since Debian divides it's releases (stable, testing, unstable) you can more or less dial in your preferred comprimise between stability/cutting-edge; this allows lots of older machines to run a modern OS that may not otherwise be able to (Installing Ubuntu or SuSe on a 10 year old laptop requires a bit of finessing; moreso than Debian stable..) - sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1BigKewW,
You say would any argue that Debian is on a par with Redhat and SUSE. I'm not sure why would argue that it isn't. If anything, Debian's development has accelerated. During the Woody eons, there seemed to be more cause for concern than now. You presented a false choice that Debian is failed or troubled. It is neither. *nix guys arguing and bitching is hardly new and they'll work things out or fork as usual and life goes on and so does Debian :)
lpcustom,
I one point I switched from Ubuntu to Debian Sid. I found it working better than Ubuntu ever had. But here's a word of caution. Because its being update all the time, packages can and do break. Now if any Ubuntu users think Debian is dying, here's a hint: If Debian is dying (which its not) that would be very bad news for you. - dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2 Smigel !?
- GnuTzu, on 10/12/2007, -12/+13True, but does this sulking really have to be a public spectacle?
- sworoc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's older than Windows 95, I figure they have some of the kinks out by now...... if it's still around, while '95 isn't even close to doing anything remotely new, I think we can safely say it's sticking around for a while...
- metalhead3767, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Its hard to pay your employees when you give away the product for free.
- cynicist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1blueZhift, I agree. I thought the whole point was loving what you do. They started doing it without anticipating anything but their finished code. If some people happen to be benefiting monetarily as well, then good for them. Thou shalt not profit isn't a tenet of the open source philosophy. Get over it.
- sworoc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Linux development isn't always glamorous, but it is inevitable. My point is that while there is no multi-million dollar advertising campaign out there to promote a smiley image saying "buy our product", stuff gets done. It always has gotten done, and all of the progress is out in the open, where anybody can pick it up and run with it.
Look at Knoppix, Ubuntu, and all the other Debian based distros. Huge projects that came out of hard work before it. You can criticize the arguments that take place, and say that Open Source never gets anything done, but the truth is, there is no company to go bankrupt, no image that has to be kept up.
Debian, and true Open Source projects will always exist, as long as one person out there is willing to work on it. This house of cards has a concrete foundation. - sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How of cards collapsing, huh? Indeed. When with this "delay", the pace of Debian development lately as been downright speedy. How long was Vista delayed again without much real improvement to the OS (the UAC could have been in 6 months)? A little spat like this doesn't mean that open source is collapsing like a house of cards.
- pllb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Debian Etch will be a superb release. If you haven't already, you should check out the features. Notable improvements include the graphical installer which btw is so easy a newb could use it. Also secure-apt, encryption during install. Ubuntu's update manager also found it's way into Debian so you get that if you choose the desktop install. To many improvements to name. I suspect a January release since Etch is now frozen.
- sworoc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1dig me down, wrong place
- pllb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Good point regarding companies. I remember when Ubuntu Etch was released a lot of people were upset that without any notice Mark killed all the Ubuntu artwork and replaced it with something else.
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