Subject: Re: Roles for distributions

From: Daniel Jacobowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 19:04:32 -0400

[CC list trimmed - that was silly]

<asbestos suit.  Again.>

On Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 05:36:31PM -0400, mberglund wrote:
> Yes. I conceed that debian is a non-profit organization. I would argue
> that there is a great many things about them that are 'commercial-like'. I
> have always wondered why one of the Linux distro's has not taken a look at
> the BSD method of system updates. Each one, (I have asked four, with SUSE
> being the most blatant) has said no. I am forced to believe that this is
> amoney issue. I will also conceed that I have NOT asked Debian, but I am
> not sure I like thier gpl-centric way of doing things.
>
> Don't misunderstand, I do respect (and even believe in) the gpl, for
> ceratin situations. But I will not limit myself to only this type of
> software.

I don't understand you.  Debian does not have a GPL-centric way of
doing things - we have a definition of free software, which includes
BSD licences as much as it includes the GPL!

And what do you mean by "the BSD method of system updates"?  The "I
feel like rebuilding it all myself" method?  This has been argued to
death, and if you really do want to do it with Debian it is not
terribly difficult to do, but I fail to see it as a good idea.

> It also seems like the lost art of making an OS the SAME from platform to
> platform is just that, LOST. This is another lofty goal in the project.

The only ways in which Linux differs from platform to platform support
additional features or unavoidable differences - you aren't proposing
anything like a common endianness, or a common integer size, I hope?
As convenient as they may be, you cripple multiple architectures for
the sake of a few.

Dan

/--------------------------------\  /--------------------------------\
|       Daniel Jacobowitz        |__|        SCS Class of 2002       |
|   Debian GNU/Linux Developer    __    Carnegie Mellon University   |
|         [email-masked]         |  |       [email-masked]      |
\--------------------------------/  \--------------------------------/

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