On Thu, Dec 09, 2004 at 12:40:29PM -0500, Ian Murdock wrote: > Let me first say unequivocally that the LCC is very interested in > getting Debian involved. The question has always been: How do we do > that?
I think there is one obvious answer to this question: 'Learn from history'. 1. Unix and UnitedLinux failed. LSB party succeeded but has no practical importance. 2. GNOME succeeded for the desktop. The reason why the above failed have already been outlined in this thread and one quote from Bruce sums it up pretty well: 'The members considered that they had proprietary value at the level at which they were collaborating'. The reason why GNOME succeeded is because it builds a solid, predictable and free base for vendors and distributions to build on. Every major distribution which is interested (mostly RedHat, Novell and Sun) has people working on GNOME and collaborating with each other. The other reason why GNOME succeeded is because it spectaculary managed to reinvent itself to make it feasable for others to build upon it. Before those mentioned above used GNOME as their base, it was pretty much similar to what Debian is today: No proper release schedules, delays and not much of a broad and far-reaching vision. So I think the obvious conclusion to the above answer ('learn from history') is: *** The interested parties of the LCC should pick Debian as a base and Debian should make this possible. *** Rather than everybody just throwing all their stuff in together and mixing it up. Of course, this would also mean for Debian to change. Debian is free and solid today, but not predictable. Thus: * We should commit to strict release cylces of a base system others (and Debian itself) can build value upon. * We should proabably also commit to a set of core architectures which *need* to be bug-free on release, while the rest *should* be, but would not delay the release. * We should look into having a reality-check with respect to licensing and the way we treat each other. On the other hand, this would also mean: The other partners should get involved into Debian development, both by getting their toolchain/base developers into the Debian project and possibly accepting Debian developers into their ranks. All this could not be done easily, but it is the only viable solution for a solid, free and predictable base system. There is no alternative to it. thanks, Michael