Re: Making Debian Responsible For Its Actions
sheddingbikes.com
sheddingbikes.com
It's not.
A number of months ago, I tried getting trimage (a gui image optimizer, http://trimage.org) into debian. Since I already had a working Ubuntu PPA, I figured it wouldn't be too hard. Packaging instructions for debian are available at various official websites, but contradictionary and they all seem to presume you have packaged for Debian before. Jargon like RFP (request for packaging) and ITP (intent to package) is thrown around frequently without explanation.
Luckily, there is debian-mentors, meant to help upstream developers with becoming a sponsored maintainer. Most of the debian-mentors site links to outdated packaging instructions, using which will mean you will be ridiculed on the way-too-hostile mailinglist. Trying to do 'the right thing' is almost impossible, as most of the feedback will depend on the personal opinion of the person responding. I suspect this is because they, too, don't know which packaging instructions to use or point to.
Trying to get my application into debian has been nothing but a massive, timesinking frustration, and I wish that wasn't the case.
It seems once they get in they're in for life. Yet, some of the worst DDs who crap on programmers seem to somehow get in charge of projects they actually hate. If they hate it, and they're breaking the software because of this, then why can't I, the original author, get them fired.
At an even simpler level, why can't you report bad DDs and have them reprimanded or taken off the project? That alone would bring out some better responses.
http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-3
"The Project Leader's Delegate(s) may choose not to admit new Developers, or expel existing Developers. If the Developers feel that the Delegates are abusing their authority they can of course override the decision by way of General Resolution - see §4.1(3), §4.2."
Although my guess is that they're not going to kick anyone out because of your ranting.
Just remove the community from an open source community and things will start happening FAST.
Since, most people reading this thread are truly influential can't you guys talk with canonical and fork Debian under the Ubuntu project? You could model a community around how HN runs and vote things organically into existence while keeping a high level of quality. Instead of a rant match between a bunch of egos.
If you think about it the HN model is perfect for such stuff. If and only if you attract the right audience, but your work already reaches them!
Have you ever considered doing that? Or is there something wrong in my suggestion?
You could always make voting tiered and restricted like stack overflow to avoid this... Moreover, if you attract just the right kind of people then the community will start moderating itself and keep the fluff at bay.
Surely, we need to try something like this out.
Wouldn't that be a better way to do things?
Yes, he wrote an offensive post crying for blood, but after he had a chance to cool down, he used his own fame and audience to exhibit a well-reasoned response from someone who disagreed. That's a very adult thing to do. In some ways, it's actually better than an apology.
As a good reference for the exact type of behavior I'm talking about, see this:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=380731
This is what I'm talking about. You can't treat people that way and not expect them to rise up.
Also, from everything I can tell about your original post, you had a (well known) problem with Ruby gems on Debian, not with something you wrote. I can understand being irritated about that (Debian is not blameless, obviously), but there are jerks everywhere, and also an awfully lot of nice people in Debian too. Your lynch-mob mentality (seo tricks, in-person confrontations, etc...) reflects very poorly on you and is extremely unlikely to produce anything approaching positive changes.
If you don't like the freedom others have with open source licenses, why not just go back to making proprietary software where you won't have the problem. Freedom means that people sometimes do things you disagree with (even vehemently so), and if you can't handle it, then perhaps it is simply not worth it.
Tell us about the changes you are going to make such that all gems/eggs are automatically packaged for RHEL/Debian/etc so the overhead for DDs, and consequently their opportunity to confuse things, is near zero. That's the outcome we need. Are the languages prepared to make the changes necessary?
It's not just us affected whippersnappers causing problems — even the enterprisiest Java communities have given up on your packaging model.
Why would it be so bad, for example, to have something like this in a python script:
import awesomelib >= 2.10 import specialsauce == 1.58
Of course this immediately opens up a veritable hydra of questions and corner cases and other considerations that need to be made in designing such a facility, but that's why there are smart programmers and smart distro makers out there :)
I think it's fairly clear that there are grumpy, recalcitrant, belligerent people on all sides of this argument, and the people who lose most are the users that everyone claims to care about. As a user I feel that is deeply tragic and I feel like we have all failed.
import awesomelib >= 2.10 import specialsauce == 1.58
Where did you get the idea that I didn't want it?
Unfortunately there's no implementation path to make it possible on Debian's side, no matter what the language communities do to compromise. apt can't handle it technically, and their release cycle process can't handle it socially.
I'm not a skilled packager, so I can't get into a deep discussion of the parts that are missing on both sides, but it seems fairly clear that parts are missing on both sides. Perhaps it will take the work of, say, the ruby and ubuntu communities to demonstrate the change is possible and hugely beneficial for users, and encourage its adoption in Debian?
Arch Linux has a similar model, but they did it more conservatively to make binary packages useful.
Sometimes the easy choice is the wrong choice. If you just step back and say "well, they want to eat every meal at a fast food restaurant I guess I better make it easy for them to do that" then you are an enabler.
All that said, they should get off the fence about it. If they don't want PHP development beyond the web on Debian they should put that in a policy somewhere and direct people to it.
PS. Excuse me, there was one amusing paragraph in the rant. The one in which he equaled Debian, the most independent and free software obsessed distribution out there, to Microsoft.
I don't think it's so out of bounds to compare Debian, the most copyright-license-obsessed distribution out there, to Microsoft.
They think that the advertising clause in the OpenSSL license makes it impossible to use with any GPL programs — despite the fact that the OpenSSL developers think it's fine as a platform library and tons of upstream developers of GPL software choose to link against it. In Debian's world, they'll only allow you to use it if you get every contributor to agree to a special exemption clause appended to the GPL.
Through their absolute fealty to the most draconian interpretation of the letter of the law, Debian does more to further the cause of software patents and non-free licensing than any other organization. They choose to demonstrate how idiotic such ideas about IP are by implementing them to their fullest — by being idiots.
Wow. Really?
> They choose to demonstrate how idiotic such ideas about IP are by implementing them to their fullest — by being idiots.
From the guidelines:
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I for one do not care at all for your rude name calling.
For what it's worth, I'm not particularly fond of debian-legal either, but it's entirely possible to express that disagreement without calling everyone who does not see the world as you do "idiots".
None of this shit matters at all when shipping source code, and binaries only matter if both parties are in the US. But the Debian project is out there with jackboots on, doing what they can to take useful freely-licensed software out of distribution. What other organization is doing anything like that?
I'm sorry that you find yourself so wrapped up in such an organization, I did not mean to insult you directly, but rather the ideology y'all are applying to make my world a worse place to live. And I would be far more acerbic in a face-to-face conversation.
You didn't understand my line of argument centering around idiocy (should have used fewer anaphora) — my point was that the Debian people know that they're being idiots, and that it's the purpose of their actions in this squabble. We all know that software patents are stupid, but Debian's approach is to show the world just how stupid software patents are by fully respecting them, implementing the letter of the law until it is repealed. I think that's a useless and infuriating course of action.
That said, one thing I don't agree with you on is that "well, they probably won't notice / bother us, so it's ok to skirt the letter of the law". I think that's not really the right attitude either. Debian makes some strong commitments to shipping free software that people can use and redistribute as they see fit, so I think they have to be cautious at times.
I am not a part of Debian any more. I moved on to being simply a user (and bug reporter) of Ubuntu, which I think gets some things right that Debian didn't. I just don't like the "you fucking idiots" style of debate.
The OpenSSL project does not consider it to be a problem at all.
The upstream authors that simultaneously link with OpenSSL and use a GPL license obviously don't think it's a problem.
Even Debian is not jackass enough to patch SSH to link with NSS or GnuTLS instead.
Debian fails to do step 3. Microsoft's routine is "embrace, extend and suffocate" while Debian will never go beyond step 2. And they have the license to keep them honest.
And yes, they embrace and extend. Embrace is taking the package in the first place. Extend is carving it up and patching it so that other companies that choose Debian are forced to either work around their quirks or accept them. That's the exact classic definition.
But seriously, all distros patch things, they have to to make them work well together on the platform in question or to get the features/fixes they need. Look at how much RHEL patches the kernel, or Ubuntu patches GNOME.
Canonical forks Gnome because Novell and a cadre of adolescents in western europe still technically control the project. Ubuntu will win eventually and this will stop being an issue.
Sane distros patch upstream just enough to make the software build and work. Debian does it to fulfill their ideological goals.
Specific grips with your assertions aside, I think you are too quick to dismiss the ideological goals of FOSS projects - the entire FOSS ecosystem is afterall founded on some pretty seriously ideological goals, particularly Free Software. Open Source exists to dampen these goals and I suspect that a lot of folks now involved in this world are just interested in forking ruby software from github to run on their Mac ;)
Disclaimers: I own a Mac, but Linux has been my desktop/server OS of choice for the last decade, and I work as a sysadmin for a Linux distro company. I also write some software that's packaged in most of the distros now, so I feel self-entitled to see this from several very relevant perspectives ;)
If you posted this at oppugn.us I wouldn't say a word, but I assumed that sheddingbikes.com is a place for more polished stuff.
PS. Debian is a loosely coupled group of more or less skilled volunteers with very little oversight and no business motivation. Debian has its flaws, but I see nothing in common with Microsoft.
Sadly, it's not frequently that people send in a good response.
If HN people want to get involved with Debian, packaging and so on email me and I'll do my best to help you.
Probably the best way to fix whatever you believe is wrong is by getting involved.
Like his message to Zed, it's clear, concise, and seemingly accurate. It also includes a wonderful and well commented example program in expert idiomatic C showing signal handling. I hadn't even known comp.lang.c was a going concern!
It's exactly the sort of quality code I'd expect from someone who writes such good prose. While I'm sure there are some examples of good prose writers who can't code, are there any definitive examples of good C programmers who can't write? Or is this just a "true Scotsman" problem?
Then, any OS distribution would be required to follow your wishes or not include your software. If you want unit tests, they include them. If you want all of it, or parts of it, they do it. If they don't want to or can't then they don't adopt your project.
I'm currently just figuring out how to word the license that way so it'd still work.
[1] The FSF says “This is a restriction on usage and thus conflicts with freedom 0. The restriction might be unenforcible, but we cannot presume that. Thus, the license is nonfree.”
The whole point of open-source software is that I can take a thing, decide that I only want 50% of it, rip out the other 50%, add on a bunch of new stuff, totally change some of the remaining stuff, use it for a new purpose, package it in a new way, undo a decision the maintainer made that I disagree with, etc. If you don't like people having that freedom, open-source just doesn't seem like the way to go. It sounds like you want a "freeware for verbatim distribution" proprietary-but-no-cost license.
I agree with your post. It's also worth pointing out that if someone abandons open source licensing, one thing I'd put in my licenses - way before we talk about fiddling with the path layout and such - is that the software can't be used by people I find reprehensible: neonazis, repressive governments, and so on and so forth.
Of course, I prefer freedom to that kind of licensing, so I just live with the knowledge that horrible people may use things I wrote.
I think that such a license would fit Zed's needs perfectly. Particularly if his restrictions were mild enough that nobody minded following them.