Debian: too free?

Debian: too free?

Posted Apr 29, 2004 2:56 UTC (Thu) by gavino (guest, #16214)
Parent article: Debian: too free?

I've always seen Debian as something like the Australian Democrats, who's unofficial motto is "keeping the bastards honest".

The Aust. Democrats work in the shadows of the big parties, ready to take over in case the dominant parties of the Australian political landscape - the Australian Liberal Party and the Australian Labour Party - somehow take the wrong direction. When the Australian Democrats hold the balance of power (ie they can side with either Labour or Liberal to form a majority vote on a particular issue) they have the power to 'keep the bastards honest'.

I see Debian in a similar role. Having Debian there, possibly in the background if not in the foreground, means that no big distros can ever take the greater GNU/Linux system down a propriatary path. ie creating a dominant distribution that relies on propietary parts, leading to vendor lock in.

Keep keeping the software world honest Debian - just don't lose your relevance in doing this. Otherwise Fedora will rule this role and you will slip into obscurity.

My vote would be to get Sarge out, *then* get to work on complying with the new social contract, because to have political impact you need relevance. If a debian developer is alone in the woods and there is no-one there to hear his social contract, does he make a sound? OK now I'm being facetious :P

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