On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 08:45:56AM -0500, Simon Law wrote: > What I mean is that the term "the Debian system" is ambiguous > outside the Social Contract. It _can_ be interpreted in ways that are > not implied by "the Debian distribution." Since you asked why some > people prefer the latter, I gave you some reasoning.
I guess I wanted to see enough reasoning to know a few more specifics -- in this case "what kinds of ambiguities do you see"? > I don't see how anyone could confuse the meaning of "the Debian > distribution." This means that it is less ambiguous than "the Debian > system." I don't quite follow -- it seems to me that if someone can think that "the Debian system" refers to something other than our primary effort, they could equally think that "the Debian distribution" refers to something other than our primary effort. For example, we distribute a lot of email, and a lot of bug reports. > I believe that it's better to use terms that are more specific, > so we don't have to go around speaking a small variant of English. I agree, but the issue here seems to be what we're being specific about. The problem I see with "distribution" is that we could be distributing things with no logical relationship between them. The problem you see with system, apparently, is that we could have systems that we're not distributing. Perhaps, the right thing to do would be to use both -- alternating between the two or some such. Or even use "Debian system distribution" in a few strategic spots. But to even begin the kinds of analysis I'd need to do to figure out if that's the right choice (and, if so, how to approach it), I think I'd need some specific examples of the reasonable misunderstandings you're seeing. -- Raul
