>>"David" == David Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Our users. Not our users of the most popular >> architectures. _all_ our users. David> Please! Your last justification "we do it because it floats David> our boat, not for the users" was at least honest. I see that you can't maintain a civil dialogue. I certainly do not understand how you come to the conclusion that this statement of mine is dishonest; but I most certainly am close to disregarding you as a rude, inconsiderate, troll. David> One of your $250 hours would do more for "_all_ our users" if David> spent on a i386 than on 68k. And this statement either displays a profound lack f understanding of English (quite possible, it is not your first language), or a worse grasp of simple logic. All our users do not use i386, hence the statement above does not make sense. Secondly, I doubt if the statement is really valid either, see below for my reasons. Indeed, were you a prime example of a user of i386 box, I would now be tempted to lower the importance of i386 in Debian (despite the fdact that I do not have a non i386 machine). David> This simple, irrefutable fact It is not a fact, nor is this irrefutable. Uncovering and fixing porting related bugs leads to fixing problems that are generally flaws that have been hidden on other architectures, it leads to better design, often more modular, streamlined, and simpler, due to the resulting abstractions; portable software often is easier to maintain. David> does not make 68k users "second class citizens". If you want David> to argue this, you need to go back to the original metaphor David> and explain why obscure diseases deserve as much funding as David> those affecting large fractions of the population. Who the hell cares about sheer numbers of users out there in the wild? I sure as hell don't. If numbers had been important to me, I would not have been wasting my time on Linux. >> Do you know what motivates the developers? David> I would certainly think so, since I am one professionally. And Professionally, remuneration often is the driver; it is not a factor in volunteer work on free software. A quick google search for you email address failed to turn up any hits apart from postings of a few user lists; so I have no idea if you work on any free software, and thus have a first hand understanding on what may drive people to work on it. David> I (and I strongly suspect most other developers) get a much David> bigger kick out of doing something new that out of doing David> something old on an obscure platform. Glad to know you feel that way, in case you ever show up in the NM queue. BTW, anyone who does not care about a solid, well tested, portable software is not very professional, really. Software engineering is more than just the latest 31337 cool hack; profession systems integration work requires solid, workanlike, professional QA work as well. I would hope that most Debian developers are not juvenile 31337 kiddies with a minuscule attention span. >> Debian leadership? The project leader has no say in deciding >> what architectures one releases. David> "No say?" That is flat-out wrong. The PL and RM may not decide David> alone, but they most certainly have a say, and a large one, in And on what, pray, are you basing this? When did the DPL ever have _any_ sayu whatsoever in the arches one releases for? The RM needs to bve convinced, yes, but he merely has veto pwoers, he certainlky does not add new arches all by his lone self, over the objections of people doing the real work. David> Certainly the appropriate conclusion wouldn't be to "ban" any David> 68k package someone wants to produce. But it would be to say David> we will not freeze the whole damn distribution while we wait David> for them and the infrastructure they require. I am so glad you are not the RM. manoj -- "You can't expect a mother to be with a small child all the time," Margaret Mead once remarked, with her usual good sense, but in 1978 she shocked feminists by snapping that women don't really have children to put them in day care twelve hours a day, either. Caroline Bird, "The Two Paycheck Marriage" Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/> 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]