George Bonser wrote: > > On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Ed Cogburn wrote: > > > > In other words, the value is the process and not the content. > > > > > > What do mean by content here? The software? > > > > I'm saying the 'process' has been positively influenced by the > > 'politics' (the Social Contract is perhaps a good example of the > > 'politics' of Debian). > > And I think the process has been influenced more by the simple fact that > they have a lot of developers spread all over the world and that FORCED > them to develop strict standards if they were to produce anything at all. > I see the benefits coming more out of the distributed development > environment than out of any free software issues.
You are almost certainly right here. The distributed development is a factor in the end result, but I don't think these factors are mutually exclusive, however. I think all the factors we've talked about are influencing the end result. In fact, at this point, only a detailed poll of the developers would shed any further light on this debate. I would rather not waste their time, as this debate really isn't that important. Whatever the factors that have influenced the Debian process, its the end result that speaks for itself. :-) I like the Enterprise Debian idea and believe it could work. Actually, all Deb really needs to start out with, is a corporate services and support company that will provide support for the use of Debian in corporate areas. A modified Deb could be built incrementally as the needs (that are different as compared to the needs of the current developer community) of the coporate market require. Deb is *already* usefull in a business environment. The Linux Journal magazine is running Debian on their machines, IIRC. -- Ed C.