The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Can I interest anyone in RPM?

On Fri, 26 Sep 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote:

> Redhat has the lion's share because of aggressive marketing
> for commercial gains. We have made impressive inroads into
> that market place without the financial intervention of
> aggressive marketing. Should we continue to try to penetrate this
> market? Certainly! Should we do it by following the leader? Absolutely
> not! Not even if their product is technically better than ours. Which
> it isn't. (We should improve our product 'til it exceeds theirs.)
>
> We _are_ more than our packaging system, but that packaging system
> embodies Debian's sofware philosophy, while RPM is the embodiment of a
> commercial philosophy.

well said, Dale.  couldn't agree more.

redhat and debian have different goals, and fit different niches. they
are specifically focused on the commercial market....our market is
broader (and, to a certain extent, encompasses their market too). our
primary goal is technical excellence. theirs is profitability (which is
not necessarily incompatible with quality, but quality does take 2nd
place)



aside from this, though, my basic reason for being against switching to
rpm is that there would still be incompatibilities between redhat and
debian-rpm. the file system structure and sysvinit is quite different.
switching to rpm would give the *illusion* of compatibility which just
isn't there. try to install important redhat rpms on a debian-rpm system
(or vice-versa) and the system will break.

the only way to resolve this would be to follow their lead and throw
away a few years of development and design...because RH sure as hell
wouldn't throw away their design. being a company, they can't really
afford to say "we got it wrong, we're following debian". that would
seriously undermine their position in the market.

so, this would result in debian just being another variant of redhat.
big deal, what's the point in that? i know i wouldn't bother being
a part of it....it wouldn't pay me anywhere near as much as debian
does (payment being in "good feelings" for participating in something
worthwhile)


> I still say wait for them to come to us. (Or at least wait for their
> customers to come to us.)

:-)


craig

PS: yes, i do believe that RH "got it wrong" on a number of issues.
their half dozen or dozen programmers can't do as good a job as our
200 developers, even with our occasionaly flame-fests and political
crap sessions. we've made some excellent design decisions and we should
stick with them and improve them. there are some truly outstanding,
first-class programmers and sysadmins on the debian team and the rest of
us are pretty damn good too :-)



--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-private-request@lists.debian.org . 
Trouble?  e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .