New distribution: gNewSense 1.0 [LWN.net]

New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 16:53 UTC (Thu) by TxtEdMacs (subscriber, #5983)
In reply to: New distribution: gNewSense 1.0 by baruch
Parent article: New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

The changes and refinements the Ubuntu group makes to Debian Unstable are resubmitted to Debian. It is the latter than seems reluctant to accept those offerings.

While I have great respect for both the accomplishments of the Debian project and the professed ideals, just throwing funds and efforts into that project assures nothing. Did you note friction and time wastage caused by funding just a very small group to allow them to focus on the boring, mundane, mind numbing task of packaging the new release? It took an election to approve that radical deviation from what some saw as a violation of their basic ideals. That alone is stark proof funds and concentrated efforts of nearly all developers will be an assured success. Those that see their precepts of purity will not stand idly by.

I suggest, if you distrust the actions of some distributions pick one that matches your ideas with cash and efforts and let the world see your product. Might I suggest Debian?

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New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 20:19 UTC (Thu) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]

>It is the latter than seems reluctant to accept those offerings.

You have to remember, Debian is the upstream for Ubuntu.
As a downstream user you are not obliged to help out upstream, but if you do (or even make claims about it in public) it's nice to abide by the workflow of upstream, that is, posting patches in the bts and making an effort on integration, not dropping all changes whole-sale on the maintainers.
Fortunately this seemed to be not because of ill will and the situation is improving.

>While I have great respect for both the accomplishments of the Debian project and the professed ideals, just throwing funds and efforts into that project assures nothing.

True, strong-arming your way into the project doesn't work. But dedicating
funding and genuine effort into it can accomplish a great deal.

>Did you note friction and time wastage caused by funding just a very small group to allow them to focus on the boring, mundane, mind numbing task of packaging the new release?

Release manager is a function that controls a lot of policy.
Mixing controlled funding with creating policy may not be a good idea.

It looks like a good faith effort was made to keep the trail of funding external to debian, so no conflict of interest could arise, but if it looks like Debian, walks like Debian and quacks like Debian, chances are it's not a Dunc.

>It took an election to approve that radical deviation from what some saw as a violation of their basic ideals.

It's not wise to dismiss the concerns of some of the engaged developers as radical, because in the larger perspective of operating system distributions the whole debian project holds that same position.
There was a lot of confusion and there are legitimate questions to be asked such as for example:

Why not make a long term commitment to positions with long term benefits for the project such as secretary or ftp master, in short, the official positions that have to do with enforcement of policy, not creation ?

Unfortunately some hasty GRs were proposed without anyone managing to formulate precise questions, and a lot of careless questions were attributed to "jealousy" leaving the project with a firm resolution on shaky ground.