On Sun, Dec 05, 1999 at 09:13:17AM -0700, Richard Stallman wrote: > What does it mean to make a new GNU/Linux distro that is more > user-friendly and entirely free? How would it differ from Debian? > It seems to me it would differ in two ways: > > 1. It is entirely free. You could achieve this starting with Debian > by eliminating the non-free and contrib categories (the definitions > may need a little adjustment), getting rid of some links to them, > changing some HOWTOs, and a few other things. > > 2. It has some additional software for user-friendliness. > > If you think about it, #1 is basically equivalent to what I've been > asking people to do since about a year ago: to make *in effect* > a version of Debian which has only the free software (main and non-us). > > But instead of forking the whole distro, I've proposed doing this by > making some structural and configuration changes to make it possible > for these two versions of GNU/Linux to share almost everything. > That seems both more efficient and more friendly. > > As for #2, that software needs to be written, but Debian would > gladly accept it I am sure. So there is no need to fork, no need > to make a separate project--not for reason #1 and not for reason #2.
I see three other reasons to eventually fork : 1. I cant recommond Debian to GNU/Linux newbies. So I have to reccomend them some not-100% free distro. The whole Debian is too difficult to change. It *may* be easier to fork. 2. Debian's packages quality is very inequal. We cant force Debian to make Quality Standards, and if maintainer of some package dont think this is a bug, we can do nothing. 3. Debian is going out very rarely. Potato and half is very good idea (is anyone sure woody will be in 2000 ? Im not) Our possible distro have to be .deb compatible. And will probably share also most of base and many other packages.
