The value of middlemen [LWN.net]

The value of middlemen

Posted Aug 12, 2004 12:14 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533)
In reply to: The value of middlemen by wookey
Parent article: The value of middlemen

No it wouldn't. And I don't think you mean 'fork' either - distributors try hard not to actually fork things.
Most of the time, but sometimes it's necessary, as it was with the XFree86 - X.org change.

There are good reasons why Red Hat and Debian (for example) are not identical. [...] Which one, overweening, system would you have us all use?
One shared linux friendly fork of cdrecord, not one version of linux. It would be silly if everybody was independently patching cdrecord to fix the same problems, but I don't think that actually happens too much since they can all lift patches from each other.
That said it's possible that the pain of a full-blown fork might be less than the pain of dealing with Jörg....

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The value of middlemen

Posted Aug 13, 2004 0:42 UTC (Fri) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> > There are good reasons why Red Hat and Debian (for example) are not
> > identical. [...] Which one, overweening, system would you have us all
> > use?
> > One shared linux friendly fork of cdrecord, not one version of linux.

A case in point for the confusion caused by saying "Linux" when one means "GNU".

special "Linux" version

Posted Aug 13, 2004 2:44 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I don't think this is a case in that point.

This is a rare case where the relevant characteristic of the systems in question is a matter of the Linux kernel. One of the issues is the way the user identifies the CDROM drive and how the program accesses it. That's pure Linux kernel.

Neither that nor the other issue -- DVD writing -- seem to have any connection to GNU software.