Re: package ownership in Debian
On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 04:16:53PM +, Gustavo Franco wrote: On 7/29/06, Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 02:49:34AM +, Gustavo Franco wrote: Hello, i thought Debian project was a big team. If people here don't want to work in a team, we're going nowhere. Two words for you: Fred Brooks. More two for you: Be polite. OK, I'll try again. Please would you be so kind as to educate yourself as to the detrimental effect on communication efficiency of increasing team size by reading Mr. Fred Brooks' excellent essay on the topic, The Mythical Man Month. I would highly recommend the book of the same name, as it also contains a series of other essays on related topics, which may have the effect of increasing your knowledge in the general area of software engineering management. Happy now? I think that force is the wrong term, we should encourage and in some cases require to avoid single point of failure, IMHO. require and force certainly seem like the same term to me. in some cases and in all cases are different terms to me. But you said that force was the wrong term, not in all cases. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: package ownership in Debian
On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 07:46:58PM +, Gustavo Franco wrote: On 7/29/06, Manoj Srivastava [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 16:16:53 +, Gustavo Franco [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On 7/29/06, Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 02:49:34AM +, Gustavo Franco wrote: Hello, i thought Debian project was a big team. If people here don't want to work in a team, we're going nowhere. Two words for you: Fred Brooks. More two for you: Be polite. What is so impolite in pointing you to an excellent reference, and gently reminding you that increasing team size (to, say, the number of Debian contributors) is detrimental to product quality and ability to deliver on time? Manoj, it's clear he was trolling, it was far from gently reminding me, come on. Just because you leap into the boat, doesn't mean I was fishing. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: NMUs and (auto-)subscription to the PTS
On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 06:35:57AM +0200, Adeodato Simó wrote: * Anthony Towns [Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:29:57 +1000]: subscribe to the PTS ISTR a discussion about automatically subscribing NMUers to the PTS for the package, and dropping the subscription with the next upload of the package (be it a maintainer upload or not). That's a particularly good trigger for unsubscription. I'd be interesting in hearing opinions about this functionality. I think it'd be good to have it, if implemented in a good way. (Guess somebody could come up with But I track bugs on my non-maintainer uploads by visiting the BTS via web everyday!, but well, conceivably so could say the maintainer, and he receives the mail anyway.) If there are no reasonable objections, I'll let this hang in my ~/TODO. :) +1 from me. Will save me forgetting to subscribe manually, and I can't see *any* way you would do an NMU but be able to make a case that you shouldn't be notified of updates on the package. About the only concession I'd make is to allow the NMUer to unsubscribe from the PTS for the package. - Matt
Re: package ownership in Debian
On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 02:49:34AM +, Gustavo Franco wrote: Hello, i thought Debian project was a big team. If people here don't want to work in a team, we're going nowhere. Two words for you: Fred Brooks. I think that force is the wrong term, we should encourage and in some cases require to avoid single point of failure, IMHO. require and force certainly seem like the same term to me. When you work out how to channel-bond human-to-human communications, we'll talk. Until then, please fix actual problems instead of making broad statements with no actual benefit. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: package ownership in Debian (was: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?)
On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 07:41:46PM +0200, Fabio Tranchitella wrote: Hi Pierre, please don't Cc me, I read this list. :) Il giorno ven, 28/07/2006 alle 19.28 +0200, Pierre Habouzit ha scritto: and that won't happen because I'm not very keen on leraning yet another VCS, and that other's think the same, and that you will find poeple that never used svn or just can't use it, and poeple that never used bzr or don't like it , or ... I was talking about repositories, not a single monolithic repository: you are free to use cvs, svn, monotone, bzr, darcs or whatever else you prefer. If every developer would use a common server for his repositories, it would be easier for the others to find and use them. Find: Yes. Use: Not unless they know how to use the system, which Pierre has already ruled out. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?
On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 12:54:39PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au wrote: What if we introduced the concept of area maintenance? Like saying Matthew Garrett is part of our hardware support team, so can thus NMU any package that needs changes to support that release goal. with the proviso that a bug gets filed with the NMU patch [0] at the same time. We already have something like that with 0-day NMUs for certain transitions authorised by the RMs. That's certainly an interesting idea, and I'd be happy to explore it. How do other people feel? I'd be happy for someone who had a particular interest in an area of my package to NMU it straight away if they needed to for some purpose, as long as they didn't break it or at least were equally quick at fixing it back up to it. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Linux Magazin Germany, affecting Debian's image?!
On Thu, Jul 20, 2006 at 12:24:20PM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: PS: Is it true that Ubuntu things about supplying a 3 year offer for source under 3b so derivates of ubuntu can go sourcelss? A nice idea, to be sure, but it doesn't seem particularly helpful, unless the derivative isn't modifying anything GPL-covered (possible, I suppose, but unlikely), since the moment you modify something you don't have a written offer from someone for that source code, and can't use 3c any more. More likely, Ubuntu is going to let people who use the Soyuz (I think that's the one) part of Launchpad to define their own custom distros provide the source alongside the binaries, thus letting everyone go the 3a route (as long as you sign your sanity away by agreeing to use Launchpad for ever more). - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Linux Magazin Germany, affecting Debian's image?!
On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 12:15:48PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 07:51:30AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 05:04:02PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: If you distribute binary images with a magazine and have something in that magazine saying if you want the source write to address with a photocopy of this specific text, everything is okay. No more so than if you want the source write to address, enclosing a picture of you petting a cat. Unless, of course, you can show that a photocopy of this specific text is a necessary cost of providing the source. You're only required to provide the source to those who received a written promise from you or anyone who passed on the written promise. 3b) Accompany it with a written offer [...] to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code Sorry, I just don't see how your interpretation comes out of that. Can you elaborate further? - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Powered Logo
On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 10:44:41AM -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote: In particular, Ubuntu has received harsh criticism from Debian developers in the past for pointing out that they are, in effect, contributors to the Ubuntu project. That's because contributor has different connotations to originator, and many people did not like the associations between themselves and Ubuntu that contributor conjured up. Why didn't Ubuntu also make loud noises about how Linus or RMS are contributors to Ubuntu? There's a lot more of their work in there than a lot of Debian developers. I'm sure RMS would love to be associated with Ubuntu as a contributor. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: The Usenet Cart00ny comes to Debian [was: I am ashamed to be a Debian user.]
On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 09:12:33PM -0400, GNAA Jmax wrote: This is exactly the sort of hate i expected from the debian community. I feel ashamed to be a debian user, as though I have betrayed my brothers and sisters by giving into your hate. I shall not tolerate this, and will be considering legal action against the Debian group under the equal rights act of 1964. Oh, *please* go for it. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: buildd and experimental
On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 02:46:02AM +0100, Gabor Gombas wrote: On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 01:04:17AM +, Brian M. Carlson wrote: However, the code of conduct seems to point out that one should not Cc someone unless they specifically ask for it (a guideline that you neglected to follow, after I pointed this out to Mr. Bushnell). Frankly, I never check the recipient list when I press g in mutt. I assume that if you do not want to be CC'ed, then you can set up Reply-To: to express that. How? I can't use the same header for two purposes; if I want to specify that private replies should go to one address, but I want list replies to go to the list (and only the list), how do I go about that using only Reply-To? - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 01:01:32PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Which other derivative has made available all of the changes they've made, more-or-less as they make them? Which other derivative doesn't? At least for GPL code, making available the changes one makes is a legal requirement (assuming that one wants to distribute binaries). A number of derivatives don't make binaries publically available, or they don't have reasonably obvious places to go to get the binaries and/or source. I certainly haven't seen a derivative put up a diff repository like Ubuntu has. I know it's not a giant leap in terms of usability or the effort required to implement it, but it's a baby step further than any other derivative has gone (AFAIK). - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Linux Forums
On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 12:32:22PM +0100, Anders Breindahl wrote: On 2006-01-26 1710, Matthew Palmer wrote: I'm doing this for me. Benefits which may flow to others are coincidental. I wouldn't expect you to be the person who's answering trivial newbie questions anyway, then. Oh, I answer plenty of questions, but I tend to be more interested in answering the questions of people who are (a) capable of demonstrating a modicum of effort up to this point, and (b) interested in maintaining a presence in the community in the longer term. I consider this to be in my self-interest because those people will help to take up some of the slack in answering questions from the next generation of newbies-on-their-way-to-greatness. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Linux Forums
[uhm, dude, line length?] On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 06:04:25PM -0800, Will L (sent by Nabble.com) wrote: My view is that commiters will favor mailing list because it requires commitment, as Adners said, it has a sense of seriousness. But, is it reasonable to expect a general user to be committed? I'd certainly hope that they'd be at least somewhat committed if they're expecting to have a conversation with committed people. For exmaple, suppose a user just wants to ask a question, is it reasonable to require him to subscribe, receive unrelated emails, then unsubscribe? Yes, quite reasonable. If you're requesting my volunteer time, it seems reasonable to ask that you make at least a minimal effort to become a part of the community. I actually find it quite useful to watch the flow of messages across a list -- I pick up quite a bit of useful information just scanning messages. Also, the questioner might be able to answer some questions as well, helping to relieve the general support burden. Why should asking a question be complicated? Why can't the list be designed to let him receive only replies to his post instead of receiving all emails? Because, by design, a list favors commiters, not the general users. Who are these commiters you speak of? People who are actually part of the community? Those are the people we want on the lists. People who just want the answer to their question and don't want to contribute back can pay for their answer. Why are we discussing this? I think we want to show some love for the general users, no? They do contribute by finding bugs. Anyone who reports a bug who isn't also willing to engage in a conversation isn't worth a hill of beans to me. What's more, without them, why doing the project? I'm doing this for me. Benefits which may flow to others are coincidental. I am a member of a new project called Nabble - the goal is to improve public discussions on the web. It works like Gmane with regard to mailing list - it provides mailing list with a searchable archive, a threaded view, and a web gateway for posting. But it tries to improve upon existing solutions by providing a better search (using Lucene) and a clean UI. And apparently a broken posting interface. Gating mailing lists to forums for people who haven't realised that mail filtering exists is a fine thing, but if you start promoting Nabble or anything else as a come here to get your questions answered for free gateway to Debian lists, I think a lot of people are going to get awfully irritated. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 06:49:37AM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: On Tuesday 24 January 2006 00:08, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Le lundi 23 janvier 2006, Paul Johnson a écrit : On Sunday 22 January 2006 03:16, David Weinehall wrote: Since all Ubuntu packages are recompiled against a different set of libraries, the bug might not even affect the Debian package, even though they share the same source. Hence having Ubuntu developers triage the bugs to rule out such issues before they are forwarded to Debian's BTS is always a good thing; thus the maintainer field should be changed for *binary packages*. The source is the same, so the field should NOT be changed for *source packages*. Given Ubuntu hopelessly complicates everything, pretends there is cooperation where there is none, and merely duplicates the effort of the debian-desktop project, and contributes nothing to the community or society, what's stopping us from officially discouraging Ubuntu's existence? FWIW, what you say is false and *many* developers are interested in cooperation, not in war. And Ubuntu is doing far more for us than most other derivatives that we ever had. Provide evidence, please. Which other derivative has made available all of the changes they've made, more-or-less as they make them? - Matt
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 05:33:33PM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: On Sunday 22 January 2006 03:16, David Weinehall wrote: Since all Ubuntu packages are recompiled against a different set of libraries, the bug might not even affect the Debian package, even though they share the same source. Hence having Ubuntu developers triage the bugs to rule out such issues before they are forwarded to Debian's BTS is always a good thing; thus the maintainer field should be changed for *binary packages*. The source is the same, so the field should NOT be changed for *source packages*. Given Ubuntu hopelessly complicates everything, pretends there is cooperation where there is none, and merely duplicates the effort of the debian-desktop project, and contributes nothing to the community or society, what's stopping us from officially discouraging Ubuntu's existence? I think that way lies madness, for so many reasons. It's not exactly encouraging of the principles of Free Software, nor is it particularly practical. Would we hold a GR to say Ubuntu is the Antichrist? Some sort of technical thing to micq our packages against Ubuntu? I don't really see the value in it, either -- what's it going to get us? I seriously doubt that, even if we *wanted* a PR war, that we could win it. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 12:10:54AM +0100, JanC wrote: On 1/17/06, Wouter Verhelst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How about renaming Maintainer to Debian-Maintainer in Ubuntu's binary packages, and having a specific Ubuntu-Maintainer? This should probably happen in a way that all (or most) Debian-derived distro's agree on then. And one more problem: Ubuntu doesn't have the same maintainer concept as Debian has... I keep hearing this, but I really don't believe it. In Debian, Maintainer means An individual or group of people primarily responsible for the on-going well being of a package. As I understand it, in Ubuntu, the MOTUs have responsibility for all of the packages in Universe. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 09:20:33AM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 07:08:38PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: I keep hearing this, but I really don't believe it. In Debian, Maintainer means An individual or group of people primarily responsible for the on-going well being of a package. As I understand it, in Ubuntu, the MOTUs have responsibility for all of the packages in Universe. In practice, it doesn't work out to mean the same thing, however. Most of the packages in universe are maintained only by the Debian maintainer, and propagated unmodified into Ubuntu. It is only when there is a specific motive to change the package in Ubuntu that anyone on that team will touch it. But if a problem in a package in Ubuntu universe does appear, whose responsibility[1][2] is it to fix it? Whatever the answer to that question, also answers the question what should go in the Maintainer: field?. By way of example, the Debian maintainer is equipped to answer questions like why is the package set up this way?, what are your plans for it?, etc., while the MOTU team are not. What the? By that logic, the upstream author should be in the Maint: field, since they're in the *best* position to answer those questions for the majority content of the package. At any rate, in most cases the answer, from the Debian maintainer, to the first question would either be Dunno, can't remember or the previous maintainer was a known crack addict, while the answer to the second would be shrug make sure it doesn't break, I suppose -- none of whick are particularly more interesting answers than what you'd get from the MOTUs. - Matt [1] Subject to the usual we're all volunteers, yada yada proviso. [2] Remember also that with responsibility should come authority, so the Debian maintainer is usually an immediate non-candidate in Ubuntu.
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 12:41:49PM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 07:13:31AM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 09:20:33AM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: By way of example, the Debian maintainer is equipped to answer questions like why is the package set up this way?, what are your plans for it?, etc., while the MOTU team are not. What the? By that logic, the upstream author should be in the Maint: field, since they're in the *best* position to answer those questions for the majority content of the package. At any rate, in most cases the answer, from the Debian maintainer, to the first question would either be Dunno, can't remember or the previous maintainer was a known crack addict, while the answer to the second would be shrug make sure it doesn't break, I suppose -- none of whick are particularly more interesting answers than what you'd get from the MOTUs. If I were to accept your declaration that the Debian maintainer is equally ill-equipped to discuss the package, then it follows that they are an equally valid value for the Maintainer field. It only follows if your definition of maintainer is can answer all development questions. If you're going to go that way, you may as well put the man in the moon as the maintainer of your packages, as he's got as much chance, in the general case, of answering those questions. Thus, I'd say that your definition of Maintainer is bollocks. There really isn't any point in arguing our individual views, though. What I'm interested in is what will satisfy a majority of Debian developers, and the proposed poll seems like the closest we'll get to that. All you'll get is the loud minority having a whinge then, no matter what the outcome. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 01:40:11PM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 08:31:44AM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: All you'll get is the loud minority having a whinge then, no matter what the outcome. It will certainly beat the hell out of continuing this thread. It will just be this thread all over again. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Your posting: Debian on one dvd?
On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 05:12:18PM -0500, Daniel Tasch wrote: One of the problems Linux users in countries like India have is low bandwidth. They prefer to get their distributions on CD or DVD as far as possible. Debian is very badly affected by this as we usually stress updating over the net. This is not just a problem in contries like India. I am in the US and am still on dialup, and can only get 26k at that. I have to update my redhat by mirroring the updates at work where I have a good connection, burning a CD, and brining it home via sneakernet. I would love to be able to use Debian, but dealing with a new packaging system along with it's extreem network-centeredness is making that impossible. What Debian really needs is to give some consideration to people who have to do this manually. Not everybody has a high-speed internet connection. Please be more inclusive. There's full CD sets of the latest stable release, plus the packaging system makes it easy-to-trivial to make your own local mirror offline, either via CDs or on a hard drive. Programs such as apt-zip can also help you maintain a system in circumstances where you don't have direct network connectivity. If none of those options rock your world, describe what *would* do it for you, and the chances are that somebody has already done it, or can describe it in a few minutes. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Ubuntu/Debian cooperation [was: Complaint about #debian operator]
On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 08:29:20AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 10:00:22PM +0100, Joachim Breitner wrote: Am Donnerstag, den 15.12.2005, 15:39 +0100 schrieb Sven Luther: Sounds like a very good idea, and fully in the scope of Utnubu. Some questions: * Is it common to refer to debian bug numbers in ubuntu patches I think not, they have their own (ugly bugzilla with no email interface), and their own bug numbers. Not sure if this is something where the ubuntu guys can and will be willing to do the extra work of listing the debian bug number also, or if they have been doing this already. Ubuntu is actually working on a system, called Launchpad (http://launchpad.net/), which is apparently going to be an Uber meta BTS, tracking bugs in Debian's BTS as well as a pile of other distros' BTSes. In principle, then, you could use that system to track the mapping between Debian bugs and Ubuntu bugs. Currently, the system is being used to track bugs in the Universe packages (those which aren't in the fully-supported distro -- the vast majority of Debian, in other words) but not the much smaller 'main' distro. I haven't looked at how good the bug mapping is lately, though, and the system isn't ready for full-scale production yet. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Ubuntu/Debian cooperation [was: Complaint about #debian operator]
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:17:32AM +0100, Michael Banck wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 01:06:51PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: There's I screwed up because I made a mistake, and there's I screwed up because I don't actually know what I'm doing, but I screwed up because I didn't care about doing a quality job is on a whole other level. I have much sympathies for the two-dozen-odd MOTUs which are supposed to maintain the 1-odd packages in universe without much help in order to make the whole distribution shine - we should cut them some slack, IMHO. As Jonas said, the MOTUs did take the job on of their own volition. The issue comes back to the standard set of knobs you can fiddle with in software development: time, resources, scope, and quality. You can take longer, increase staffing, reduce scope, or reduce quality. With rigid 6 month release cycles, it's a bit hard to take longer, and it's tricky to increase staffing when you're all volunteers, but it's a pity that the MOTUs have decided to drop quality instead of scope. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Ubuntu/Debian cooperation [was: Complaint about #debian operator]
On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 10:50:54AM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: On Thu, 15 Dec 2005, Matthew Palmer wrote: OTOH, I've seen a number of ubuntu patches which were blatantly wrong, where the maintainer clearly didn't grok the package they were changing. *This* irritates me mightily. The reason, as given by a MOTU when I asked It irritates us all. But I'd rather have substandard patches submitted (just don't expect me to not go medieval on anyone adding a [patch] tag to something that is clearly crap) than losing the good ones along with the substandard filth. I think we're talking about different things. I was referring to the often brutal manner in which packages are modified to fit a quick need within Ubuntu. Whether or not those hacks then propagate back to the Debian BTS is a whole other matter. - Matt
Re: Ubuntu/Debian cooperation [was: Complaint about #debian operator]
On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 01:57:12PM +, Roger Leigh wrote: I don't disagree. I would much rather every ubuntu change had a corresponding patch filed in the BTS, Every relevant change put into the BTS would be nice, yes. Filing everything in the BTS would result in a lot of patch,wontfix bugs in some packages. There's also issues with making sure that patches in the BTS don't depend on other patches provided previously, as the longer the packages have been diverging, the more layers-upon-layers of changes will build up. OTOH, I've seen a number of ubuntu patches which were blatantly wrong, where the maintainer clearly didn't grok the package they were changing. *This* irritates me mightily. The reason, as given by a MOTU when I asked about why a change was made in a fairly substandard manner, was there aren't enough MOTUs to do all the work, so we don't have time to understand the package, we can only fix the immediate problem. (Paraphrased, but I can dig up the exact conversation from my (public channel) IRC log if anyone thinks I've given a wrong impression). There's I screwed up because I made a mistake, and there's I screwed up because I don't actually know what I'm doing, but I screwed up because I didn't care about doing a quality job is on a whole other level. - Matt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Retailing
On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 05:44:25PM -0600, Peter Samuelson wrote: [Michael Poole] For example, GRUB and Linux are both licensed under the GPL. Both would be included with these retail systems and would be written to locate and call functions within the BIOS; that is, GRUB and Linux would be dynamically linked against the (presumably non-free) BIOS. It has long been a perception that the computer BIOS, like the kernel, provides an API across which a program can execute without considering the kernel a derived work of the userspace programs, or the BIOS a derived work of the kernel. The same is not believed to be true of shared libraries in a userspace application. I myself am not certain what the important distinction is between those two cases, but this is very well established GPL interpretation dogma. I think it comes back to the *intent* of the modules it contains restriction. It's quite simple to build a binary-only shared object and modify a GPL-licenced program to use it, so if this were allowed the copyleft provision of the GPL would be severely constrained in the face of a determined software hoarder. On the other hand, modifying a kernel or a BIOS to provide this binary-only interface is quite a bit more difficult[1]. Looking at it that way, it becomes a lot easier to see why dynamically-linked libraries are targeted, while BIOSes aren't. - Matt [1] There aren't a lot of OSes to choose from to hack on, for instance, and the primary choice -- Linux -- is protected by it's own GPL sphere of invulnerability[2]. As for BIOSes, well, the argument goes double for that little pool of non-freeness. [2] Although if you were utterly determined to go through with it, I suppose you could write a non-free program to run in userspace, then write a GPL kernel module which called it, and then modify the GPL'd program to call the kernel module which would call the non-free program. I can't imagine how that would really escape anyone's attention for long, and while judges may not be particularly tech-savvy, they're certainly not stupid. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian - Configuring a Successful Web Server
On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 07:46:28PM +0100, Leslie Ianson wrote: I have noticed when browsing the package lists that PHP 5 in not currently support but on the official Debian site but I have seen binaries on http://dotdeb.org/ are these likely to be stable? Best to ask the people that supply the packages for that site; they'll know best whether the packages they provide are stable or not. From observation, they tend to package new upstream versions very quickly, so they get bonus marks for turnaround time, but possibly negative marks in the is this going to *stay* working category... grin - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: snapshot.debian.net
On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 01:21:04PM +0200, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote: On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 01:12:43PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote: I consider binary packages as extrem useful to check for dependency changes etc, That can be done by having an archive of packages files alone. or for fixing issues in some core packages where you need to take an older version for building a newer one. Would one really do that after 6 months, the current on-and-about keeping time for .deb's on ftp-master merkel? I seriously doubt that -- for past stable releases and revisions, ok, but for unstable/testing? Those are by definition development branches, and older .deb's loose relevance after some time, nobody has them anymore, and whatever effect they had is no longer supported anyway in not a single way. Here's a use-case I had for snapshot.d.n -- I needed debs which matched reasonably closely with the d-i rc2 release for use in an installfest. The nightly/weekly d-i builds didn't work for various reasons, and d-i failed to be happy with the debs currently in testing. So, back to s.d.n for the day the d-i rc2 came out, get the relevant debs, and -- lo and behold -- it all Just Worked. Without s.d.n I would have been very dead in the water, and there'd quite possibly be 40 less Debian machines in the world. Whilst snapshot.d.n might not be the most core of Debian services, I reckon it has it's uses -- if for no other reason than as a resource for collecting interesting historical statistics. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bits from the ftpmasters
On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 05:16:39PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: Matthew Palmer wrote: AFAIK, we don't notify for every new piece of software in the archive, just those which would fall foul of the export restrictions. That's mistaken -- we automatically notify for all NEW packages, so that we don't have to examine every upload of every package in order to send a notification when crypto is added to an already existing package. Basically our notifications say this package may contain crypto, now or at some future date. OK, thanks for the correction. I was a bit curious as to how we handled crypto notifications after the initial upload... NEW processing for new binary packages is manual so that the name choice can be reviewed, and for general sanity checking purposes. It might be nice to do some sanity checking for changes to the copyright file in packages that aren't NEW too, but that's not really feasible at the moment, and new binary package is a fairly good indicator of significant changes that warrant double checking, anyway. Do you believe that the ftpmaster team might be amenable to either of the proposals mooted recently, such as multiple people certifying that the package is OK (like advocates for packages), or a collection of clueful DDs doing these sanity checks on NEW packages? - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bits from the ftpmasters
On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 08:23:52AM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote: Le Lun 21 F?vrier 2005 00:16, Matthew Palmer a ?crit : NEW would still have to be processed by hand, though -- crypto notifications still need to be sent, and the protection provided by two crap developers working on a package isn't not that much better than one crap developer working on a package. I don't agree at all. multiple signature has to be used if you have really reviewed the package. And as an XP freak, I guess you should know that cross-reading is really good for code quality. I don't understand why it shouldn't be the same for packages. Because there's no guarantee (or even real likelihood) that the two developers whose signatures appear on the package have sufficient Clue to be able to produce quality packages. Pair programming only works when both people are switched on and taking note of their surroundings. The ftpmasters are, in general, senior and clueful DDs, with a good knowledge of the likely high and low points of a package. And since we quite all agree that managing multiple gpg signatures is not *that* difficult, it may worth trying it, doesn't it ? Oh, I think it's a great idea, I'm just not convinced that it'll suffice for clearing the NEW processing delay. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: documentation x executable code
On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 05:38:31PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: (similarly, you CAN modify an invariant section - but you can only do so by adding a new section that subverts or refutes or simply adds to the invariant section. i.e. you can make whatever comments you like about it, but you can't censor the original words. in other words, modification only by patch - which is explicitly allowed by the DFSG) What you describe isn't modification by patch, it's modification by commentary, and you can do that even without any permissions granted at all by the copyright holder. we do have a choice, even if it's one we don't like or one that doesn't leave us with a very useful system. we don't have to distribute GPL licensed software, there are many other free software licenses to choose from. I'm not aware of any licence texts which provide explicit permission to modify the licence text itself. Can you give some examples? GFDL docs *are* free, except in the minds of wannabe-Holier-Than-Stallman zealots, and even they can't come up with any *credible* arguments why it should be considered non-free. the best they can do is come up with Can you give a reasoned rebuttal of Manoj's GFDL position statement? Preferably without use of the words wannabe and zealot. non-free, and debian has not yet voted on the issue. claiming that the GFDL is non-free is not a statement of fact, it is merely a statement of opinion. An opinon which you're working very hard not to actually argue against, but merely shout into the ground. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: documentation x executable code
On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 06:01:41PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 05:10:18PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 05:03:09PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: no, acroread is DFSG non-free for other reasons that have nothing to do with convenience. most notably, the complete absence of source-code, and the right to modify and redistribute the source. Irrelevant. It doesn't matter that the process is inconvenient. Lack of source code and no permission to modify the existing article are just convenience. no, they're not just convenience. they are non-negotiable requirements of the DFSG. So you agree that non-modifiability is a requirement of the DFSG? So why do you continue to claim that the GFDL, prohibiting, as it does, the modification of the document, is DFSG-free? - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: A little question
On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 01:58:22PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been reading the debian site for hours and i'm deeply sensitive to the debian philosophy of distributing linux. Great! i've spend a long time to learn on the book bought with my RedHat package, and now i'm used to the basic commands and the folders structure (/etc /user /dev,...) I wonder if it's quite the same with Debian In general, Debian will use the same command-line tools as RedHat (and almost all other Linux distributions), and will usually put things in the same or similar places. However, the location of a lot of config files is different in RedHat and Debian, which can trip you up occasionally. A quick grep, find, or google will usually find the answer, and for everything else, there's MasterCard -- sorry, mailing lists and IRC. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: FW: Mail forwarding in return for Debian donation
On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 09:15:00PM +, Andrew Suffield wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 01:09:19PM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 08:35:51PM +, Andrew Suffield wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 06:19:32PM +0100, Pete van der Spoel wrote: Or is the whole Ubuntu thing (where I understand Mark Shuttleworth has hired a large number of the senior Debian developers) considered to be the solution to this problem? Hiring developers away from a project, so that they no longer spend time on it, is not normally considered a good solution. Fortunately, that is not the case with Canonical. Yes it is. Fork and forget is Canonical's modus operandi (despite all the PR claiming otherwise). Sounds like someone is ticked off that there's somebody out there who cares about regular releases of an Arch client, and making one that's usable by someone other than revision control gurus... - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Reselling
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 05:00:26PM -0700, Robert Hoskins wrote: I would like to know if I could possibly resell your Debian Linux But of course. See http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/info for information specifically targetted at your situation, and http://www.debian.org/CD for general information on Debian CD sets. - Matt signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 09:38:53AM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote: * Matthew Palmer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [040808 11:10]: From the 2004.04.05 version of the keyring, I count 927 unique people or unknowns (there are several might be people, might be 'bots'). Wandering through the name list, I count 122 might not be male and 4 almost certainly female. That equates to an actual female contingent of somewhere between 0.4% and 13.2%. Note that the might not be male is very, very broad -- basically if I don't know of a male with the same name, or I know of a female with the same or a similar name, it's on the might not list. Please be aware that it's more or less not possible to go from names to reliable stats about gender distribution. For example, Andrea is male in Italy but female in Germany. Which is why I had the might not be category. And yes, all the Andreas (plural Andrea, not singular Andreas) in the project are in that category. Like I said, I suddenly wish for a gender field in db.debian.org... - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 12:16:37AM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Matthew Palmer wrote: As to the barriers to involvement in Debian by women, it's pretty obvious that our gender participation ratio is decidedly different to that of the IT industry in general, let alone the general population. I believe (although I'd find it harder to back up with real numbers) that our female / male participation ratio is also lower than participation in the wider OSS world. The IT industry is awfully vague. I question if you can make useful conclusions based upon it. I recently taught a perl class for working professionals in which 60% of the students were female. What does that say about the IT industry? The Perl community? Nothing that's what. It shows that there were quite a number of women interested in a technical topic. That counts for something. You've got to have something to compare against, obviously. The IT industry is possibly a poor choice, depending on what you want to classify as IT. But there are certainly fairly accurate industry figures for gender participation -- I know, because I've seen them for Australia, grouped in a variety of ways. Comparison to OSS contributions is even better, because it excludes the possibility that women don't contribute to OSS. You've done this for some projects, which is good. A more apt comparison would be with other free operating system projects. Let's see: FreeBSD has approximately 330 people with CVS commit privileges. [1] I counted 5 identifiably female names. That's 1.5 %. Gentoo has approximately 250 developers [2] I counted 4 identifiably female names. That's 1.6%. In contrast, the last time this subject came up, I looked and Debian developers comprised approximately 1%. (But because, we are a bigger project, that's more actual women, 8 or 9 iirc.) So we are slightly behind but by a statistically neglible amount. From the 2004.04.05 version of the keyring, I count 927 unique people or unknowns (there are several might be people, might be 'bots'). Wandering through the name list, I count 122 might not be male and 4 almost certainly female. That equates to an actual female contingent of somewhere between 0.4% and 13.2%. Note that the might not be male is very, very broad -- basically if I don't know of a male with the same name, or I know of a female with the same or a similar name, it's on the might not list. Suddenly I have this urge to add a gender flag to db.debian.org to make these sorts of things easier, but then we have race, and before you know it DHS is doing racial profiling on our keyring to find out if we're a terrorist plot... All in all, it is a fairly small difference statistically, I will grant you. I'd like to measure the larger contributor pool, though, if possible, because that's mostly what I'm interested in at present. Boosting the keyring with feminine names is a worthy, but secondary goal of my participation. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 05:46:57PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote: On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 10:29:40AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:29:40PM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote: Evidence. I would like to see evidence that Debian has not been giving equal rights to males and women over the past years. The fact that our male / female participation ratio is much lower than even the gender split in IT, let alone the wider community should be enough. That isn't evidence at all. All that demonstrates is that males and females have fundamentally different interests. males and females have fundamentally different interests is one, possible, explanation of why Debian has a far lower women / men ratio than general society. It doesn't really explain why Debian has a lower women / men ratio than exists in IT. Of course, the men-should-have-tits-and-give-birth crowd has dedicated themselves to denying this for the past 50 years. My wife and I happen to share a common interest in motorcycling, and also in needlework. I'm sure your bullshit stereotyping will come up with some explanation for that. Just because it doesn't say no wheelchairs at the door, doesn't mean those stairs aren't going to be a pain in the arse to get up. He asked you for constructive feedback. If I ask you for the same, can I expect it? Don't assume there are stairs preventing the wheel-chaired person from getting onto the basketball court; SHOW THEM to us. The fact that few wheel-chaired people are into playing basketball with normal people Talk about language shaping perception... doesn't mean that the gymnasium is discriminating against them. What about if you've got two gyms, one which has a number of wheelchair-basketball players, and one that has none. Would you perhaps wonder why one of those gyms had a different representation? - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 11:00:08PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:29:40 +1000, Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:29:40PM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote: Evidence. I would like to see evidence that Debian has not been giving equal rights to males and women over the past years. The fact that our male / female participation ratio is much lower than even the gender split in IT, let alone the wider community should be enough. Are you suggesting we are discriminating against africans, since the ratio of participants is far lower than the population figures suggest? Are we discriminating against Hindus? Why not? The culture of the project may be causing us to drive away Africans and Hindus, yes. If so, I think we should consider it's effect and whether we are losing something valuable from their lack of participation. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 10:47:45AM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote: Selon Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:29:40PM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote: Evidence. I would like to see evidence that Debian has not been giving equal rights to males and women over the past years. The fact that our male / female participation ratio is much lower than even the gender split in IT, let alone the wider community should be enough. It is fact, not evidence. You cannot conclude it comes from discrimination. You can't conclude it doesn't, either. We have several women on this list who are saying that they want to get involved in Debian, but for various reasons they don't feel comfortable doing so. What if women don't want to spend their spare time in computing activities? Do you *really* think that's the case? I knew several women at University who were quite keen to spend their leisure time in computing activities, we've got several women on this list, and I can't think of any intrinsic reason why women would not get involved in computing activities in their spare time. Can you? Just because it doesn't say no wheelchairs at the door, doesn't mean those stairs aren't going to be a pain in the arse to get up. You *still* haven't come with evidence. For example, you could point us to where in the NM process there is discrimination (of course, not about the silly he/she wordings war). There have been several places in which issues have been identified in the NM process, by the people affected by it -- issues of not having any feel for what really, actually goes on (hence Frank Lichtenheld's recent description of his entry into Debian), and documentation which could be clearer. Is that a good enough start? - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 05:50:46PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote: On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 10:41:33AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: What is left unexamined in all these discussions is why Debian (as a project) should be doing anything to tackle inequalities? Because there's a whole pile of potential contributors out there that we're almost certainly driving away. The burden of evidence is on you. I'd like to see your proofs. How about statements from the people who have decided not to participate because of the culture? How many would convince you? As to the barriers to involvement in Debian by women, it's pretty obvious that our gender participation ratio is decidedly different to that of the IT industry in general, let alone the general population. I believe (although I'd find it harder to back up with real numbers) that our female / male participation ratio is also lower than participation in the wider OSS world. That isn't evidence of discrimination against women, only evidence that men and women have differing interests. I know that ideologically you are committed to the view that women should have penises, so I don't expect good logic based on real facts to make any dint in your attempts to remake Debian in the mould of your ideology du jour. Put *down* the crack pipe. Really. It'll do both you and the rest of the world a lot of good. The amount of shit that manages to dribble down your chin and onto your keyboard is truly astounding. I'd try and point out the number of fallacies in your paragraph above, but to be perfectly honest with you, I just couldn't be bothered. You won't actually read anything I write except to work out some way to spew another load of your own ideological bullshit. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:56:49PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:41:33 +1000, Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 01:47:51PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: Or is the contention that there is some barrier to involvement by women (and only women) in the project itself? Because such an allegation should be backed up with some solid facts. Barrier to involvement by anyone who doesn't feel keen on getting involved with a percieved bunch of rowdy social-teenagers. Which happens to primarily be women (although I know several men who have declined active participation in Debian, despite definitely being technically qualified). I strongly suspect that this is not limited to women -- indeed, people raised in the occidental tradition, regardless of gender, may be better able to deal with the culture in Debian than societies where one role in the group is percieved to be more important than individual beliefs and views. So you think that changing our culture to be less confrontational would be beneficial to encouraging participation by multiple groups? Excellent. As to the barriers to involvement in Debian by women, it's pretty obvious that our gender participation ratio is decidedly different to that of the IT industry in general, let alone the general population. I believe (although I'd find it harder to back up with real numbers) that our female / male participation ratio is also lower than participation in the wider OSS world. Hmm. What do you feel about the participation of affrican-americans in the project? Native americans? Indians, given the hoopla about the growing strewnght of the Indian IT globally? I think we're probably under-represented amongst those groups, too, and I think that if there's anyone who feels that it may be to the project's detriment they should try to work out the reasons why and try to rectify those if appropriate. I'm participating in the issue of women in Debian because I have prior experience in the area of women in non-traditional roles. I have no experience in african-americans or Indians in non-traditional roles, so I probably won't be as useful in that endeavour. Does it bother you that the Project seems to be predominantly Christian (as in most developers come from a Christian background)? I wonder if we're possibly losing something because of this predominance. Why not? Given that the project is a global one, don't you think Buddhists are under represented? Hindus? Muslims? Compared to the population, there's no doubt all of those groups are underrepresented, and they're probably underrepresented relative to the general prevalence in IT, and possibly in OSS. I would suspect there are a number of constituencies that are under represented in Debian, for a myriad of reasons. Yup. The question is: are we losing something because of their lack of representation (quite probably), what can we do about it (many things, depending on why they are under-represented), and are the changes we would have to make be net-beneficial? - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 04:32:06PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 21:55:27 +1000, Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 05:50:46PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote: On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 10:41:33AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: What is left unexamined in all these discussions is why Debian (as a project) should be doing anything to tackle inequalities? Because there's a whole pile of potential contributors out there that we're almost certainly driving away. The burden of evidence is on you. I'd like to see your proofs. How about statements from the people who have decided not to participate because of the culture? How many would convince you? On the flip side, how about contributions from people who may not participate if the culture turned too touchy feely and sickeningly sweet? Yep, I think it behoves us to consider that as well. As I said in a previous message (http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2004/08/msg00053.html), we should examine what changes to the project's culture need to take place, and whether those would be net-beneficial. It might turn out that the rough-and-tumble, highly competitive and confrontational nature of the project is what creates the excellence we have, and the contributions we would gain as a result would not remedy that. If so, we would be crazy to change. However, I don't think we have to turn the project into corn syrup in order to gain the willing contribution of those we are unknowingly hostile to. I, for one, would be unlikely to continue to contribute if we had to constantly mince words or participate in group hugs with every bug report. Luckily, I don't think we're going to have to go that far. What has to be done is still to be worked out in large part, however, so we shouldn't go making assumptions either way about end-game effects, I guess. Don't ignore the flip side Indeed. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 02:42:17PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-08-07 13:11:55 +0100 Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So you think that changing our culture to be less confrontational would be beneficial to encouraging participation by multiple groups? Excellent. Yes, but I'd like to see metrics for this and the data gathered. We can all act as we think, but it would be better to see the effect in an obvious and agreeable way. I strongly suspect these are going to be general across demographic splits and don't understand special-casing women so early. Women have been special-cased because they've stood up to be counted. They're an easily recognisable demographic who have said we have these problems. So far as I have seen, debian women's acts seem sexist and likely to discourage participation by men. Is a bug in the aims or a bug in the presentation? I'm pretty confident it's presentation. Mostly, I think it's a different form of confrontational behaviour, expressed as a reaction to attack. Not very different to krooger's quasi-religious bangings-on in substance, merely a difference of form. I think we're probably under-represented amongst those groups, too, and I think that if there's anyone who feels that it may be to the project's detriment they should try to work out the reasons why and try to rectify those if appropriate. Later in the message you wrote that we probably miss out, so I assume you are one of anyone who feels Is only addressing women now trying to work out the reasons why for those groups too? I'm addressing the problem of women in Debian because I have experience with women in non-traditional roles, and because they have taken some of the initiative in starting things off. I also believe that the culture shifts that might take place could be beneficial in a larger scope. To address your question more directly, in a limited way, addressing the problems some women have expressed about Debian will hopefully address the problems that *some* other groups have. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 09:38:53AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 22:11:55 +1000, Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:56:49PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:41:33 +1000, Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 01:47:51PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: Or is the contention that there is some barrier to involvement by women (and only women) in the project itself? Because such an allegation should be backed up with some solid facts. Barrier to involvement by anyone who doesn't feel keen on getting involved with a percieved bunch of rowdy social-teenagers. Which happens to primarily be women (although I know several men who have declined active participation in Debian, despite definitely being technically qualified). I strongly suspect that this is not limited to women -- indeed, people raised in the occidental tradition, regardless of gender, may be better able to deal with the culture in Debian than societies where one role in the group is percieved to be more important than individual beliefs and views. So you think that changing our culture to be less confrontational would be beneficial to encouraging participation by multiple groups? Excellent. Well. Being less confrontational can lead to a more productive dialogue, yes, and stop wasting our time in flamefests. But a number of such confrontational interactions in the past have challenged what used to be well established ideas, and thus mitigated against group think; any evolution away from the current norm should consider what would be lost. Do you think we can challenge the well-established ideas in the project and move forward without long flamefests? I'm quite sure we've had plenty of forward-movements without associated roastings, but I'm curious as to whether you think some of the progress we've made could have been accomplished without the benefits of a heat engine. g The free software world has always benefited from selection pressure and competition between opposing solutions; when some thing does not work as you like, you are encouraged to change it to your liking, and if there are different viewpoints, well, projects get forked, and we have a broader solkution base that caters to both view points (ideally speaking). This culture of create a solution to meet your own needs, and let the best solution win (suboptimal solutions lose mind share) is one of the major strengths of free software. We may find, however, that this also engenders a certain competitiveness, especially in grabbing mind share; and you can't totally eliminate one without harming the other. I totally agree with you, and I doubt that there are too many people who would disagree that the competitive nature of Free Software is one of it's greatest strengths (just as it's supposed to be one of pure-capitalism's strengths). The question is: can we keep the competitive spirit while losing some of it's more unpleasant artefacts? not everything is either black or white I'm a campaigner for the middle ground in this issue, which I hope I'm making clear in my messages. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 01:13:31PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote: On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 09:49:35PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 10:47:45AM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote: Selon Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:29:40PM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote: Evidence. I would like to see evidence that Debian has not been giving equal rights to males and women over the past years. The fact that our male / female participation ratio is much lower than even the gender split in IT, let alone the wider community should be enough. It is fact, not evidence. You cannot conclude it comes from discrimination. You can't conclude it doesn't, either. We have several women on this list who are saying that they want to get involved in Debian, but for various reasons they don't feel comfortable doing so. Why do you focus on the women who say that, but not on the even greater number of men who don't make the grade to get into Debian? Because there have been some women who have said we want to contribute, but there are these reasons why we haven't. I find several of those reasons to be potentially compelling, and to have probable benefit to other segments. Yes, Debian discriminates. Debian discriminates on the basis of technical ability, It most certainly does. I am proud to say that Debian is an organisation that is discriminating, but not in the negative sense. and on social ability. Yes, well... As a Debian Developer it is important to be able to deal with all manner of users. Based on the behavior of the Debian-Women, I have a very real fear that they would ignore any bugs I filed because I am a White Christian Male. I think they'd likely ignore your bug reports because you have been abusive and intolerant. If they were ignoring the bug reports of anyone who fit the White Christian Male typography, I would say you have a case. As it stands, if people ignored just you, you would have a hard time convincing many people that it's because you're any of White, Christian, or Male -- as you found on d-private. What if women don't want to spend their spare time in computing activities? Do you *really* think that's the case? I knew several women at University who were quite keen to spend their leisure time in computing activities, we've got several women on this list, and I can't think of any intrinsic reason why women would not get involved in computing activities in their spare time. Can you? The fact you can't think of any reasons only means you lack imagination. Thanks for the compliment. Yes, I do prefer to live in reality. Biologically, men and women are different. Certainly (although too much cake *has* given me a bit too much cleavage recently). Trends are analog, not digital. Yes, the occasional monkey can ride a bicycle, but that doesn't prove that monkeys are as interested in riding bicycles as much as humans are. But just because all monkeys don't naturally jump up and ride bicycles doesn't mean that they aren't interested in riding bicycles. If the opportunity doesn't present itself, how do you know? Do you believe that people who lived 200 years ago wouldn't have wanted to ride in a motor car if they'd had the opportunity? None of them did, so by the reasoning you've given above they all would have preferred to walk, because they all did. You *still* haven't come with evidence. For example, you could point us to where in the NM process there is discrimination (of course, not about the silly he/she wordings war). There have been several places in which issues have been identified in the NM process, by the people affected by it -- issues of not having any feel for what really, actually goes on (hence Frank Lichtenheld's recent description of his entry into Debian), and documentation which could be clearer. Is that a good enough start? Those things are not specific to women. Tell me again, why do we need a Debian-WOMEN project, instead of a general Debian-Welcome project? Because it's Debian WOMEN who have decided to make the effort. If you'd like to start debian-welcome and start welcoming people the way you've welcomed the participants of debian-women, please, go ahead. I'll be most interested in the results. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 01:07:25PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote: On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 09:37:40PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: Don't assume there are stairs preventing the wheel-chaired person from getting onto the basketball court; SHOW THEM to us. The fact that few wheel-chaired people are into playing basketball with normal people Talk about language shaping perception... doesn't mean that the gymnasium is discriminating against them. What about if you've got two gyms, one which has a number of wheelchair-basketball players, and one that has none. Would you perhaps wonder why one of those gyms had a different representation? No, I wouldn't wonder. It is a fact of nature that birds of a feather flock together. Forcing different kinds together mostly leads to conflict and inefficiency. But why did they all decide that one gym would be better for them? Yes, it might have entirely been pure coincidence, and if so, that's the end of it. But as the proprietor of the unpatronised gym, I might like to know why I wasn't getting any of that segment of business. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 01:16:52PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote: On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 09:55:27PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: The burden of evidence is on you. I'd like to see your proofs. How about statements from the people who have decided not to participate because of the culture? How many would convince you? Our culture is our own. Every entity has a right to it. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. An attempt to turn Rome into Carthage is a hostile act, and I see it as such. Some might see it as a beneficial act, especially if you stopped electing horses as senators. If our culture is preventing us from doing a good job, tell us. That's exactly what I'm hoping to get some idea of. In the meantime, sniping from the sidelines doesn't make it any easier. That isn't evidence of discrimination against women, only evidence that men and women have differing interests. I know that ideologically you are committed to the view that women should have penises, so I don't expect good logic based on real facts to make any dint in your attempts to remake Debian in the mould of your ideology du jour. I'd try and point out the number of fallacies in your paragraph above, but to be perfectly honest with you, I just couldn't be bothered. You won't actually read anything I write except to work out some way to spew another load of your own ideological bullshit. Sounds like the facts of hard reality are giving you a headache. The No, your unfounded assumptions are annoying the hell out of me. headache could go away quite easily; just open your eyes and reexamine your commitment to hundred year old ideologies. I'll do that if you do the same for yours. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 12:54:29PM -0400, Christopher M. Hagar wrote: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 21:43:06 +1000 Matthew Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The culture of the project may be causing us to drive away Africans and Hindus, yes. If so, I think we should consider it's effect and whether we are losing something valuable from their lack of participation. - Matt This is absurd. One cannot tell the color of a person's skin from most or nearly all communications that are part of the Debian Project and if you are suggesting that there is discrimination in the New Maintainer process from ID verification, then that would be an issue that cannot be reflected throughout the Project and should be dealt with in the realm in which it is a problem. If you are suggesting that Africans or Hindus are timid, as seems to be one of the major arguments in favor of promoting female involvement, that is either racist or is not a problem that is exclusive to any one group, but rather minority groups in general (which is still not your typical minorities of ascribed characteristics, but includes personality types, socioeconomic status, etc.), in which case, having an exclusive women list, for instance, is silly. Instead, there might should be a participation list or somesuch, that reaches out to all such persons and attempts to facilitate their inclusion in the project. I just can't break that up into parsable blocks, so I'll comment on the whole thing at once. I don't believe there is a culture of explicit discrimination in the Debian project against any particular group. Some developers no doubt hold certain views which others deem unpleasant, but that's their personally held view, and if it interferes with their Debian work, *then* it should be dealt with. I certainly have no evidence that anyone in the New Maintainer process, for instance, has discriminated against an applicant for reasons of race, colour, creed, gender, age, or any of the rest of the usual suspects. What I believe there is some evidence of is that our project culture is unwelcoming to certain segments of our potential contributor base. One of the effected segments, namely some women, have seen fit to raise this issue. I believe it to be useful to examine the issues raised and deal with them if the result would be of net benefit to the project. As to the specific issue of the debian-women list, there is some benefit to providing protection to disadvantaged groups as a means of aiding reintegration. While there are no shortage of disasterous examples of this process, there are also some examples where this is working well, and I am personally familiar with one such group. The danger is that debian-women will become isolated and enclavist, but the danger of that can be minimised if wider appropriate participation takes place on both sides of the issue. That is, interested extablished Debian members take part in d-women discussions, and d-women participants do what they can to get involved in the rest of the Debian community. What isn't helpful is full-blast attacks right from the outset. You won't get very far teaching a baby to walk if you beat it every time it falls down. - Matt
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:29:40PM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote: Evidence. I would like to see evidence that Debian has not been giving equal rights to males and women over the past years. The fact that our male / female participation ratio is much lower than even the gender split in IT, let alone the wider community should be enough. Just because it doesn't say no wheelchairs at the door, doesn't mean those stairs aren't going to be a pain in the arse to get up. I wouldn't be surprised that this new wave of political correctness come from the USA (again). That comment is inaccurate and inappropriate. - Matt (from .au)
Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 01:47:51PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: On Fri, 6 Aug 2004, MJ Ray wrote: I hope that people won't feed the trolls and it results in debian doing something better to tackle inequalities. What is left unexamined in all these discussions is why Debian (as a project) should be doing anything to tackle inequalities? Because there's a whole pile of potential contributors out there that we're almost certainly driving away. I'd like to at least give this little experiment into equality a go -- not just to encourage more women, but also encourage more non-confrontational men into the mix. As far as I can tell my microwave oven was made exclusively by atheistic communist Chinese. But it hasn't affected this religious, Republican, Indian-Americans' ability to make cheese on toast any. If you wanted to help make the microwave, though, you'd probably have some problems. We (or at least I) am not looking at gender issues in Debian from the consumer's point of view. Does the fact that Debian is produced mainly by men prevent, say, a rape crisis centre from using it? No, and in fact I know of a women's refuge that is (or at least was) using Debian to run it's net cafe. Or is the contention that there is some barrier to involvement by women (and only women) in the project itself? Because such an allegation should be backed up with some solid facts. Barrier to involvement by anyone who doesn't feel keen on getting involved with a percieved bunch of rowdy social-teenagers. Which happens to primarily be women (although I know several men who have declined active participation in Debian, despite definitely being technically qualified). As to the barriers to involvement in Debian by women, it's pretty obvious that our gender participation ratio is decidedly different to that of the IT industry in general, let alone the general population. I believe (although I'd find it harder to back up with real numbers) that our female / male participation ratio is also lower than participation in the wider OSS world. - Matt
Re: inquiry
On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 04:47:03PM -0500, Warren Duclos wrote: I really find your website impressive. It would help if you would tell us exactly which website you're referring to. I assume you're talking about http://www.debian.org/, or some site with a debian.org suffix. Some of our students are getting into Linux and have inquired as to whether I can provide an open Linux server for them to use to learn and experiment. Well, that's easy enough to do. I maintained a set of such systems for a few years when I was at Uni. Can you or a colleague tell me: 1. what is the relationship of the website to Yale? http://www.debian.org == Yale the place of higher learning? None that I'm particularly aware of. They might host a box or two for us, but they're not listed on the Partners page. 2. what is the hardware you use to support the site? The site www.debian.org is running on a dual Pentium III-700, 512MB of RAM. Info on all of the machines used by the project for various things can be found at http://db.debian.org/machines.cgi. 3. who administers the site -- students of Yale? or?? Volunteer administrators from around the world. Some of them might be students, for all I know some of them might not even be out of high school yet. 4. how are costs covered -- what budget does it come out of? Donations. Some people donate money, which we spend on things that haven't been donated in other ways. A lot of the time people donate hardware, rack space, or bandwidth. And, as always, it's held together by people who donate their time. Anything else that might help me prepare to initiate something like this for the use of students -- would be appreciated. Development of a free operating system? You might like to perhaps encourage your students to get involved with us, instead of reinventing the wheel. If you're back to talking about your open-access educational server, I'd dig up an unused machine on campus somewhere (I'm sure you'd have at least a GHz machine going spare somewhere, talk to your tech guys), find someone with a bit of Linux knowledge, and tell them to set it up as whatever sort of server your students want. - Matt
Re: debian is too big
On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 01:11:32AM +0100, Philippe Strauss wrote: Dear Mr/Ms. Debian :) Hey, we might have a knighted developer somewhere, and you don't want to exclude them. g Like probably many other users, I'm facing a growing pain to stay on debian stable due to the fact that things like PHP and python [...] Our job is to develop and we want to host what we build on debian, but debian stable is becoming less and less able to support what we build, we can't stay with PHP/Python dating from 2 years back. Well, there is another possibility - you can manage a local archive of package you are interested in, which tracks testing, doing the compatibility testing each time you update your local package repository. That way, you get some level of quality assurance, while still having a collection of reasonably up to date software. This only works, of course, if you've got a reasonably small set of software, which is why it doesn't work so well for Debian. Since we're trying to support so many different uses in a single software distribution, there is a huge collection of software, with some impressive interdependencies. Getting them all straightened out and working at the same time is quite an effort. And, of course, you can allow others access to your mini-collection, and effectively become a distributor yourself. If it becomes popular, that would be a possible impetus to get the support for creating mini-distros in the main archive - the pool structure means that lots of versions of a package can live side-by-side, for each mini distro. Woody, Sarge, and so forth, would still exist as the official debian releases, but a lot of users would go for the smaller collections, with their own release schedules, names, and versioning, because they can get a stable distribution more often. At the same time I'm wondering to the number of packages debian support. Someday I wake up and dreamed I was THE DEBIAN DICTATOR which bumped out 6000 packages at once. Just to keep a core debian of ~300 packages and some debian subproject around each big pieces like apache, php, python, xfree, non-web internet services etc.. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't work very well when there are lots of subprojects that all have to be coordinated with each other. For instance, if I want to have both the PHP and Python debian sub-projects on the one box, but the two projects have dependencies on conflicting packages, I'm screwed. As I add more subprojects onto the same box, the problems get more difficult to keep in check. The problem doesn't arise in your private repo, since you're tracking one distribution of software, and just keeping a (presumably consistent) snapshot of it for your own use. Backports and forward ports can and probably will be a small part of it, but you're primarily just working from the main distribution. More seriously, my point is: Is there any hope to one day, to adapt debian to the number of packages it bears and split release cycles between a core of 300-500 packages and having the rest of packages evolving at their own pace, following the core? syncing so much package around release schedule is becoming unrealistic. I'm waiting testing to become stable for so long. I doubt it, because of the complicated dependency chains we end up with because of the number of packages we try to support. About the best we'll end up with is better support for debian-based mini-distros - these snapshots taken from the main distro. But they will have one major difference from the subproject concept - there'll be no guarantee that any of the mini-distros will interoperate, so you'll need to pick a mini-distro which suits your needs. The added value that these derived distros will provide will be selection of the most appropriate packages, and QA and integration testing as a self-contained whole. - Matt
Re: Just a single Question for the Candidates
On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 12:54:23PM +1100, Ben Burton wrote: There is a chronic systemic harrassment in Debian, but I have not seen women get more of it. I know I've said this some number of times already, but I'll say it again in just four lines so it's that much harder to miss. The problem Helen refers to in the most part is not *overt* sexism. The problem is *subliminal/covert* sexism, where everyone is treated the same way but women in general (through social training, upbringing, whatever) are less well adapted to such treatment. Eh? If it's sexism, it's racism, too, since some cultures (I've noticed it mostly in Asian people) are far more deferential and less inclined to confrontation. It's also ageism, as older people aren't acculturated to overt confrontation. With a bit more work, I could probably think up a bunch more 'isms' we're doing. My point? There's no point in labelling the problem, as it will target a symptom (let's be nicer to the girls) and not the root cause - that Debian is a fairly confrontational culture, grounded in the deeply competitive spirit of the best code wins. With our underlying culture, I'm not sure if any attempts to change us will truly ever succeed in making us the caring, sharing, non-confrontational group that will make every person happy to work with us. Hell, if we become non-confrontational, we'll probably lose some of the people who enjoy the confrontation - so we still won't be able to claim we're all-inclusive. g Hmm, I'm rambling again. Should wrap it up. First, is it a problem? Yes, I think it is. The more people who feel comfortable becoming involved in Debian, the better we can be. How can we do it? Probably only by segragating somewhat - you find a Debian sub-group that you feel comfortable working with, and you avoid d-devel and the other flamewar territories. Not perfect, but practically, we're never going to be able to get some people involved in group hugs, and driving them away is as bad as driving away the non-controntational people. - Matt
Re: Seahorse Link
On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 09:13:40PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I clicked on a link from seahorse.sourceforge.net ( packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/seahorse.html ) in hopes of downloading seahorse for debian. Unfortunatly the link did not work and I was wondering if the file is still on your server and how I can access and download it. It most certainly is still on the Debian servers, and you can get it from http://packages.debian.org/seahorse, which will provide you with links to download it for any of Woody, Sarge or Sid. - Matt
Re: Migrating to open source
Paul E Condon said: [BTW, your comments won't get to the OP as they asked to be copied on any replies] will work for many things, but probably not all. I use Turbo Tax on a Mac. I buy a new version each year because the tax laws are always changing. I don't know who would do the development of yearly updates of an open source substitute. I wonder if I would trust them with my fate in a tax audit. Don't want to go there myself and can't recommend it to Do Quicken guarantee their software against an audit? I doubt it. The EULAs on anything vaguely financial in nature that I've seen (and I work in a financial planning firm, so I've seen my fair share of them) disclaim every possible liability, and then some. Which means that your not getting any extra protection out of your annual payments in the event of a fuckup. Best course of action is to maintain a good working relationship with an accountant who is knowledgeable in tax law, and maintain your accounts in an OSS package that you can customise to *your* needs, according to the advice of your accountant. - Matt
Re: Migrating to open source
Gus Maggie said: My name is Roy Havens and I own a small business. Currently I run Windows XP Home but the browser I like to use is Mozilla. I am interested in migrating all of my computer to open source. The only thing that is preventing me from doing so is the MANY M$ programs I currently use. What Windows emulators do you have for Linux that will run MS's programs? For instance, I use Turbo Tax and Quicken. I need Linux to work with Intuit's programs. Some of the other essential programs I use are Floor Plan 3D and Front Page. I have heard of WINE; however, the one who told me of WINE has not have much luck with it. WINE has given me mixed successes; some things just drop straight in, others require some fiddling, and still others just refuse to work no matter what I try. It's unfortunate. There are a couple of commercial WINE derivatives which have extra functionality over and above what comes out of WINE CVS, Crossover Office, in particular, is designed to run MS Office, which means that a lot of applications Just Work with it as well. But what you might like to try in a lot of cases is to find OSS alternatives. Then, not only will your operating system be open source, but so will most of your applications. For instance, there are several quality alternatives to Front Page, and a couple of quite excellent accounting systems (GNUCash for the small operation, and SQL Ledger for pretty much everything else). Haven't played with Turbo Tax, but it's probably just a report generator for Quicken, which means it'd be easy to rewrite for either of the two systems above. With some research and experimentation, you should be able to get alternatives for a lot of yourcurrent software. Widows has made it very difficult for a person with a business to migrate unless you have an emulator. And that's exactly how Microsoft likes it. Please contact me with any information. Please reply-all your response. For practical matters, debian-consultants might be a good place to ask some questions about migration strategies, or a Linux Users Group close to you. Either one will be able to offer a lot of good advice on the practicalities of migration. - Matt
Re: offering my help
[Apologies if you get this twice, I don't know if you're subscribed to debian-project] On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 11:27:14AM -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi I am living in milwaukee,WI for last 6 years now. And thanks to friend of mine I got addicted to Linux. First I was using mandrake for last 5-7 days I started using debian. I like it so far. Congratulations! I hope it continues to be lots of fun for you. g So I was wondering if I can be help to you guys. I can translate your product documents to Turkish Language . There's lots of stuff that needs to be translated - manuals, package descriptions, debconf questions, and lots of other stuff I'm sure I've forgotten. The main coordination page for translations is http://www.debian.org/international/ - hopefully you'll find everything you need to help you there. You'll also probably want to subscribe to the Turkish translation discussion mailing list, debian-l10n-turkish, which you can do from http://lists.debian.org/. - Matt
Re: question
On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 04:16:13PM -0400, Thompson-Laurin, Harriet wrote: Specifically, I am to find information regarding Debian regarding: Cost How much does 7 CD-Rs cost down your way? Market share Why? You should use something because it fits your needs, not someone elses. File Processing 'sed' works for me. 'rm' is a little more efficient, but results in occasional data loss. Programming capabilities I'm not aware of any OS which is capable of programming. However, Debian, like most Unix-like operating systems, has a very wide selection of languages which you can use to program the system. Availability of application software Over 10,000 packages and growing! User interface Yes. Then I am to apply this information to a scenario in which a company is facing the dilemma of upgrading the desktop PC's to run either Windows XP Professional or Linux platform (Debian). In the teacher's scenario, the How is that a dilemma? di*lem*ma (n.) 1. A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive. 2. (Usage Problem.) A problem that seems to defy a satisfactory solution. 3. (Logic.) An argument that presents two alternatives, each of which has the same consequence. following was provided about the mythical company's current hardware: 400 pc's running Windows 95/98 with a Pentium CPU, 64mb RAM and 2Gb hard drive and below or equal to 300 Mhz. 350 pc's running Windows NT with a Pentium 2 CPU, 128 RAM and 4 GB hard drive 150 pc's running Windows 2000 with a Pentium 3 CPU, 256 RAM and 20 GB hard drive 100 pc's running Windows XP with a Pentium 4 CPU, 256 RAM and 40 GB hard drive. Well, if the company goes all XP I can tell you that it's up for 750 new PC purchases. I was able to find on your site that Debian works with the older Pentiums, but no reference to Pentium 4, so that is my primary concern. In this college case study, would the Pentium 4's need to be downgraded to Pentium 3's in order to run Debian? Think about this for a moment. Windows runs on all grades of Pentium (well, crawls, for the most part), including P4s, with the one kernel. Debian runs on P1 to P3 fine with the one kernel. Would it be a stretch to say that it'd work nicely on a P4? Probably not. Of course, any other information would be helpful. It does appear that Something that may sway your opinion on which to go for is http://www.infrastructures.org/papers/bootstrap/bootstrap.html. It is possible to do something along these lines for a Windows-based network, but take it from someone who's tried it both ways, it's a damn sight easier for a Unix network. Also, one thing you've totally left out is servers. They're the meat of the system. If you've got a complete set of Windows servers and can't touch them, you'd probably trash the P1s and replace them, and install Win2K on everything else (XP is a dog - there's nothing else to say for it). No point putting ultra-reliable desktops in if you're going to have to reboot them 4 times a day because the servers keep dying. If you're either replacing the servers, they're running a Unix-like, or you don't have any (how does that work with 1000 PCs?) then it's a much more open question. Also, if you want to talk to the people who actually do this shit for a living, try [EMAIL PROTECTED] there are quite a number of available application packages for Debian, from the website. I gather than the Unix/Linux/Debian marketshare in total is estimated at 5%, but I also need to obtain marketshare for just Debian by itself. You've got no hope of getting accurate figures, for either Linux as a whole or just Debian. Problem is: there's no reason for anyone to share the fact they've got a Linux box running the office. Even more so for Debian, because, unlike commercially oriented distros, it *has* no boxed set sales, so you can't even extrapolate from that nugget of info. But market share is a hokum anyway. You use market share figures when you don't know what hell you're doing, and want to be able to lay the blame on everyone else when it screws up: But, but, but, everyone *else* uses it!. Analyse the fit of the system for the company involved based on what each option can do for the company. Incidentally, you'll need a shitload more knowledge than you think you will to make a complete decision - and then comes the fun and games of designing a transition plan (for whichever option you choose) which won't leave the whole company hanging effigies of you in the hallways. CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This E-Mail is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you have received this communication in error, please do not distribute and delete the original message. Please notify the sender by E-Mail at the
