On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > > There are many types of users that depend on Debian. Most of them probably > > have a mixture of motives that include both the political (DFSG) and the > > practical (apt rules!). However, the argument that Debian should be > > worried about keeping all the users is not one that I personally buy. > > I'm worried about loosing contrib, waisting _more_ time > supporting some non-free or contrib software, and the explosions > of badly-made and incompatible deb packages that may result.
Point taken. I, however, am not worried about this at all. If the core Debian distribution is bulletproof, other distributions can choose to provide added value such as those extra packages that you might need. Although this has been debated a lot, back when Bruce Perens was running the show, there was an idea that Debian should be a completely free (as in DFSG) base than anyone could use to build other distributions, either commercial or non-commercial. That is not the Debian of today. I like today's Debian because it provides the best support for scientific computing that I have found. I have always liked Debian because of the commitment to free software. Anyway, whatever the outcome of this GR, I will still be using Debian. I won't worry about what others might do when I make up my own mind. Cheers. Syrus. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Syrus C Nemat-Nasser, PhD | Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials UCSD Department of Physics | UCSD Department of Mechanical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | and Aerospace Engineering