Hi, >>"George" == George Bonser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
George> I agree. If I am speaking nonsense, just tell me what part of George> my idea is nonsense and why rather than a blanket statement George> along the lines of "The thoughts of the user community are of George> no importance to us" which is the message I heard. I was not going to respond to this thread any more (I really fail to find your arguments convincing), but this gross mischaracterization is something I have to correct. I assume you were referring to my posts, though you were too polite to say so. I never said (nor did anyone on thisd mailing list) that "The thoughts of the user community are of no importance to us". I do refute that "Since the users are the ones you all are doing this for, you are working for the users, by gar, and what they say is of over riding and paramont importance, and do what they say or else" Yes, I exagerate. But no more than the user-unfreindly spin that peole have been putting on my statements. George> That hurts as a user and leaves one feeling that they can not George> contribute the results of their life experiance which may be George> quite a bit more varied than a 20yo developer. Whatever gave you the idea that anyone is saying that non-developers can not or do not contribute? Bug reports, and request for enhancements, and feedback on user interface issues are important. The community which I write things for is larger than those who write code. However, remember that the people who work on free software projects may not share your views, and indeed, may have different agendas from your own. s far as the version numbering scheme goes: Major versions imply a significant (major) change in the distribution; in the past, a.out-->elf and libc5-->glibc have been considered major changes that warrant a major number increase. Whetner a change is "Major" or not is subjective; and indeed, so far, the changes that have qualified have been one time changes and unlikely to create a rule set from. There is an unspoken implication that there may be release boundary incompatibilites at a major number change; you may need to upgrade a significant number of packages on the system; and, in the past, that may mean that you can't mix and match packages between different releases; in the future, we shall do our darndest that such upheavals are prevented. Minor changes just cause the minor number of the release to be bumped up; and the changes in the system are minor; in the past, that has meant you can have a hyubrid system; in the future, we shall try extend this around major version changes too. The version numbers are determined based on an subjective and empirical measure of the changes involved, as determined by the developers; and not on pilitical motives like "that makes our version number higher than anyones". I still reject the idea that we should change major versions faster to increase our market share. I do not want to achieve market share that way. The same reason applies to the number assigned to slink: I would assign the number based on how different slink was, (and that depends on how much of the transition to the FHS, and the new way of doing releases, and the restructuring of the Archive gets done), rather than how well CD manufacturers can market the upcoming Slink. If forced, I shall ask the version number to be bumped up to a billion or so to fix this marketing problem once and for all. So pardon me for putting technical reasons ahead of marketing ones, and maybe this shall be the death of Debian if the project does it this way. But making decisions based on marketting rather than on technical merit is as likely to kill Debian as anything else. As Debian has always averred, anyone can use Debian as a base for their own distribution, of this attitude offends or displeases anyone. And the version number of that distribution can be set to whatever the distributors like. (Is this being too offensive and confrontational? -- In the free software community that I matured in, if one did not like the current way, one created the method that worked better. But that is a dying philosophy, and doubtelless I shall be villified for bein harsh and selfish and unreasonable. So be it) manoj -- Let them obey that know not how to rule. -- Shakespeare Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/> Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null