To carry a metaphor further...

Posted Nov 26, 2003 15:34 UTC (Wed) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029)
Parent article: Infrastructural attacks on free software

If we really want to run with the "systems are living things" metaphor, perhaps we should start playing up the multiplicity of Linux distributions as a good thing. After all, mixing and matching the best of several distributions to make a new and better distribution is what evolution is all about, right? The really nice thing is that software packages with compatible licenses can be similarly "inter-bred". What becomes important then is having a good set of standards and an easy upgrade/downgrade/crossgrade path from distro to distro or app to app. I'm not sure to what extent the LSB addresses this, though my impression was that it was more concerned with standardizing configurations rather than mechanisms.