Andreas Tille
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:57:31 -0700
[Answer and long quite to debian-custom, where this discussion finally belongs to] On Tue, 19 Aug 2008, Will Hill wrote:
I like the word "Customization" and think it conveys the correct meaning.
Yes, it does and we do customisation.
There's also more than one kind of customization going on. Debian Medical is a Professional Customization. Debian Junior is an Educational Customization. Terms like that emphasize Debian's universal character but let people know that there are programs that are useful for specific tasks.
But people never understood that "distribution" is something that resides inside Debian - and this is the problematic term which is incontrast to the concept.
The key internal concept is, "You push a button and you get dozens of programs the community thinks are useful for a particular purpose." External projects seek the same thing but offer an independent installable package with more or less Debian compatibility.
... newcomers just assumed that the term CDD meant this.
Dish is nifty but it understates the magnitude of what is delivered and is a little abstract. The goal is not a dish, but a menu of excellence. Being from New Orleans, I can offer an example: http://www.commanderspalace.com/new_orleans/index.php The dishes, like all food, reflect community input which may be impressive but there's more to it than that. No name will be obvious to users of commercial systems and they may be difficult for users of other distributions. Metapackages are a powerful tool that take advantage of Debian's excellent package management system and software freedom. These are hard concepts to get across to people who are used to per seat licensing and shrink wrap. Users of commercial distributions may still not understand that the power of free software comes from community input. People who are unable to understand those fundamentals will stumble on details. It took me years to discover and understand the potential of meta packages. I'm still learning. Any way you go is cool with me but I hope my perspective has been useful.
We will not drop the concept of meta packages. We are doing the exact same
work and we try to do it under a name, which gives newcomers a chance to
understand easier what we are doing.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]