Re: [TCLUG:9416] MediaOne Roadrunner and Linux (fwd)

["John R. Sheets" <dusk@ravendusk.org>]

On Oct 26, 1999, Mark Dalton <mwd@sgi.com> wrote:
> 
> The attitude that some how debian is better is the real problem.

> Don't deceive yourself, debian is not more pure than Redhat, RedHat
> GPLs everything they make, they work with the community, they are
> willing to change things.  Also Corel is involved in the Debian
> commercialization now.

Or rather, Redhat is not *less* pure than Debian?  The defining point in
most people's minds is, I believe, that the *official* Redhat packages
come from a corporation, where the *official* Debian packages come from
a very large bunch of average Joe volunteers.  No matter how good
Redhat's intentions are, they are still subject to a certain insider's
approach.  If they are going to sell a stable distribution (as opposed
to giving it away for free), they *have* to make sure the packages all
work together.  This makes it very dangerous for them to accept
unsolicited packages.

> Debian is boxing and sending out commercial versions with commercial
> support.  Granted this is through VA Linux (and co-sponsored by SGI)
> along with the phone support.  Yes it is different but Debian is no
> more pure than any other company that gives away all the software
> that they write.

Except that the money Redhat makes from selling its distribution is part
of its business plan, whereas the money Debian gets (or does it?  I
don't know how the deal works with VA) is non-essential, as Debian is a
non-profit organization.  If Redhat stopped making money, it would die;
if Debian stopped making money, it would shrug and keep going.

> I don't recommend Debian due to the holier than though attitude
> I continually see from the users.

I have heard these exact same sentiments in the Linux vs. Microsoft
arguments, with the Linux zealots making the Microsoftian uncomfortable
with their strong feelings over their OS.  It is this zeal which propels
people to succeed.  If you try to stamp out this Debian-loving spirit,
you might as well stamp out the Linux-loving spirit while you're at it.

(c:  It's your decision, but it seems to me that it's better to dismiss
things on technical grounds than on personal grounds.  The question
should be, in what ways is Redhat better than Debian?

> The question is, is debian willing to work with RedHat to work on
> a single packaging system format?

IMHO, this is a noble request, but not a fair demand to make.  Both
distributions have built their empires around their packaging systems.
Massive resources have already been allocated to support each format.
Whichever dist made the change would have to face a very large, irate
crowd of their users, which would have an immediate and deadly impact on
their respective user base.

How would the Redhat developers/maintainers feel if they had to convert 
their hundreds of RPMs over to DEB format?  And we're not just talking
about converting them with Alien.  The specs files for each and every
package would have to be re-written to match the DEB format.  During
that transition, the user base would either have to sit on stale RPM
packages while waiting for the new Redhat DEB versions to appear, or use
the already-existing Debian packages instead.  And if they're going to
do that, they might as well use Debian!

And vice versa if the transtion was the other direction.  I guarantee
this won't happen.  We're kinda stuck, unfortuntately.

That's my opinion, anyway.  (c:

John