On 3/20/19 1:44 PM, Joerg Jaspert wrote: >> * What are the main 2-4 external things happening in the world outside >> Debian, and that are "threats" for Debian?
... > One of the questions in my platform hinted at one point: The "package" > managers various new languages came up with. Do you (and other candidates) see this as a threat or as an opportunity? Instead of packaging libworld+dog (last time I guesstimated it, we had <10% of Ruby and Perl, <5% of Python and <1% of JS...) do you envision APT being aware of other package managers (npm, pip, cran, cpan, nix, snap, something something go, etc.) and being able to say "npm is outdated, and this isn't the same risk level as having any other Priority: optional package out-of-date"? The reason why I think this is a question for everyone and not just APT maintainers is connected to a question I made in another thread. I asked whether Debian is more than Debian GNU/Linux the distro you download and install or that you get from a hoster or that you get as a side effect of someone choosing FROM debian in a Dockerfile. I implied that Debian has technical deliverables beyond a distro: APT, understood broadly as the libraries, frontends, low-level tools, build and packaging tools, linter and QA, processes, policies and procedures, the package metadata definitions, etc. I think this has tremendous value for the industry. There's also of course the packages themselves, all of which are important but many of which have significantly more logic in them compared to upstream. Seen this way, the distro (whether a chroot, a Docker image, a CD) is... a "reference implementation" of the Debian worldview, and so are the pure blends. There's a perception that the "distro" is easy to replicate (very hard to maintain, though...) but the "pieces that make the distro" are a unique superpower of this project. Furthermore, I think we might be able to find a lot of energy (researchers, enthusiasts, companies) that are discouraged from working on "distros" (feel it's not the 90s anymore, it's passe, etc.) but are really excited about working with all the underlying technology. And when coupled with DFSG, I see even the Hacker News crowd looking at Debian as a bit of an oracle when it comes to this stuff. It might very well be that we're going in this direction anyway, but I don't think we are sending that message today (or that we want to) (Yet another mail that should have gone to -devel...)
