Bits from the DPL (Opteron, LSB and cooperation)
I'm sorry that I haven't posted anything in a while. As I mentioned in my message in June, I spent a great deal of time in the last two months at various conferences. I attended 7 conferences and gave talks about Debian at six of them (in Europe and Australia). I had a good time at the conferences, and it was great and productive to talk to many Debian developers and users in person. I especially enjoyed the Debian Conference and the preceding Debian camp. I think the camp was a great success since we got a lot of work done. I look forward to the next camp and conference which is tentatively planned to be held in Brazil. At two conferences and trade shows, some developers and I approached some hardware companies in order to get a dedicated Opteron machine for Debian. This was very fruitful and I'm happy to announce that Digital Networks United Kingdom (DNUK) has donated an Opteron box to the project which will act as a developer accessible .debian.org box. This machine has recently been shipped to Positive Internet in the UK and is currently being set up. Watch [0] to see when it becomes available. Furthermore, FMS Computer has agreed to donate an Opteron machine which will be used for various porting work, especially for debian-installer. I'm very thankful for their kind donations. Finally, freenet.de AG has recently offered an Opteron machine which is now available at pergolesi.debian.org and a PowerPC with chroots (bruckner.debian.org). Thanks! I have not only talked to hardware companies, but also to some software companies, notably to those who have products based on Debian. In particular, I talked to Lindows and Xandros. Although those companies use Debian, there is unfortunately no strong relationship with them at the moment. I discussed possible ways we can work together closer and I hope something fruitful springs from that. As a start, Xandros has agreed to work with us to make sure that sarge will be LSB compliant. Regarding LSB, I also talked to Scott McNeil of the Free Standards Group and he was very helpful detailing the steps Debian has to take in order to get an LSB certification. As it turns out, there is quite a bit of paperwork to do and some SPI members and our lawyers are looking at that at the moment. Also, in preparation for LSB v2.0 there is a review of LSB v1.9 out and comments are solicited until the end of this month. If you're interested in LSB compliance for Debian, please download v1.9 and review it. See my message at [1] on this for more information. Of course there are not only commercial products based on Debian. Many of you might heard that 80,000 GNOME desktops have been deployed in Extremadura, Spain [2]. This is a great success for the GNOME project, but in fact it's also one for Debian -- those 80,000 desktops run GNU/LinEx [3] which is based on Debian! There is also Skolelinux [4,5] which is a Debian based distribution for schools. I'm very pleased with Skolelinux since they're closely working together with us and everything they do gets integrated into Debian. In particular, they are a great driving force behind debian-installer. I think we will see more efforts like LinEx and Skolelinux in the future. There is a great demand for Debian from governments and educational institutions. They like the fact that Debian is vendor-neutral and a solid foundation on which further work can be based. The open nature of our development process also makes it much easier to get involved and drive Debian in specific directions. I think that this interest in Debian is a great opportunity for us. If every government interested in using a Debian based system funds a small number of people to work on it, then there is a great amount of work done from which Debian and all other Debian based systems benefit. Clearly, this is something we would benefit from and something we should encourage. At the same time, it might create problems. Foremost, we have to figure out how we can effectively work together with such projects and to make sure that their work is being integrated in Debian so everyone profits. Secondly, there are some questions about how those projects should be related to Debian (e.g. should they be allowed to carry the "Debian" name). This question recently came up in the case of Skolelinux, but I'm sure we will see this more often in the future. I've discussed the Skolelinux case on the SPI mailing lists in the last few weeks. I have now sent a summary[6] to the debian-project mailing list to encourage input from other people. (I'm aware I'm very vague here; my -project posting has a complete summary.) In any case, I think that there is a great opportunity for Debian now to work with government or other (possibly funded) projects, and I look forward to the benefits of that work. Let's all make Debian stronger by working together! P. S. If you're no
The June LSB Conference
The LSB committee is having another face-to-face conference starting on the 14th and going until the 16th of June. The current state of the spec will be reviewed during this meeting and, if it goes like the last one, we are likely to get much closer to closure on the major issues. Due to the way that air travel is priced it is cheaper for me to arrive on Saturday evening (around 8:20) and pay two extra nights of room rent than to fly when convenient. I will have a rental car, so if there is a convenient way for developers in the area to get together, let me know and I'll be there. I'm really looking forward to this conference. Much good progress has been made and I look forward to more success at this meeting. If you haven't been following the LSB project and would like to know just what progress has been made so far, Source Forge is hosting the LSB and you can take a look at the project by pointing your browser at: https://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=1107 Check it out, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- See www.linuxpress.com for more details _-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Re: LSB?
Joseph Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Reasonable objection notwithstanding, I intend to write a letter to those
> responsible for the LSB to attempt to raise the issues we have with their
> current proposal. I would appreciate discussion on these issues in other
> parts of this thread. I encourage those who have a significant opinion
> not yet voiced in the LSB thread found on debian-devel to write them down
> either as part of the thread or directly to me to aid in the drafting of
> this letter.
I'm jumping in the discussion a little late (I just joined this list),
but please let me try to help explain things...
I'd like to fix the problems that Debian developers are finding in the
LSB. I think most of the i386isms are due to problems in FHS (you can
blame me), which will be fixed in FHS 2.1. Remember that the original
FHS dates back to when i386 was the only architecture included in
Linus' kernel. (Patches to the FHS source are welcome.)
I also imagine that some people have some concerns with the TOG FHS
test suite. Basically, anyone is free to make a contribution to the
LSB test suite effort -- provided that:
- It's free ("Open Source") and released under the license we say it
should use. (Since we haven't chosen that license yet, Andrew Josey
is using the Artistic license for now, but he agreed to switch when
the LSB makes that decision.)
- It must be in sync with the LSB written spec (which references the
FHS) and the LSB sample implemention should pass it.
- It won't be incorporated into LSB 1.0 without passing muster of
the LSB test suite group (headed by Dale Scheetz).
The technical problems you note are due to deficiencies in the written
specification (in FHS 2.0), and are not mistakes on the part of Andrew
Josey of the Open Group.
Andrew has contributed more to the LSB effort than most people. BUT,
the TOG is *not* defining LSB. Linux people are defining it -- and if
a company passes every hurdle we insist that they pass, why shouldn't
we allow them to help? (I haven't seen any marketing spin from TOG,
but if there is any, please point me to it.)
If anyone has interest in helping develop LSB test suites (or other
parts of the LSB), please email me and Dale Scheetz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
- Dan
(By the way, before taking on other projects, I was heavily involved
in Debian, from the early days with Ian Murdock through Bruce Perens.)
Re: LSB?
It has come to my attention that recent decisions made by the Linux Standard Base body (I hesitate to say "committee" as I have never been party to any of their internal discussions and am unaware of their internal organizational structrure) are possibly unwise and have been determined by at least a few individuals as A Bad Thing. Particularly worth note are several i386isms and other things which those who have spoken already feel are oversights with potentially disasterous results. Reasonable objection notwithstanding, I intend to write a letter to those responsible for the LSB to attempt to raise the issues we have with their current proposal. I would appreciate discussion on these issues in other parts of this thread. I encourage those who have a significant opinion not yet voiced in the LSB thread found on debian-devel to write them down either as part of the thread or directly to me to aid in the drafting of this letter. For those who missed the thread on -devel, relevant URLs can be found at http://ct.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/news/1999/01/18/916679929.html -- "I'm working in the dark here." "Yeah well rumor has it you do your best work in the dark." -- Earth: Final Conflict
