The resignation of Matthew Garrett, one of the most active developers in Debian, has drawn attention to some ongoing issues about how the project operates. Specifically, Garrett’s announcement on his blog cites a lack of civility and a slowness in decision-making, and compares Debian unfavorably to Ubuntu, the Debian-derived distribution which is increasingly attracting the efforts of many Debian maintainers.
Maintainer’s Resignation Highlights Problems in Debian Project
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Eugenia Loli
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I read that the other day. I think he has a point but I do not think it is as severe as he makes it sound. I do think debian needs a good group hug, and sit down and define a few things, and also a evaluation of some issues.
Possibly a restructure and some well defined teams along with a down-size to become a bit tighter and quicker if you know what I mean.
Then again is it just the nature of the beast. A huge group, that needs time to turn, and that is okay since it is that group itself that it works for?
That’s one of the best parts, anybody can play… or not.
The recent ‘firmware in main’ issue is a example that I just got tired of the back and forth. Before that it was debian and SPI row over Java. Before that it was…
I gave up on the mailing lists and no longer subscribe to them. I have used debian for a long time but I honestly do not care for the drama and my nerves cannot handle it so I just stay out for the most part.
Still love them though…
This actually sounds worse than it is. From what I can gather, it sounds as if he’s leaving Debian’s mailing lists behind and just working on Ubuntu. Since most of Ubuntu’s work goes back into Debian anyhow, this is just kind of a shift of a developer from working through the Debian mail lists to the Ubuntu ones.
For a long time, Debian was so slow to make releases because they were so strict on who could become an official developer. This also made Debian the most stable distribution out there (at least in my experience). They have slackened their requirements on being a developer after Sarge, so Etch is leaps and bounds above that (more so to me it seems than the change from Woody to Sarge was) but I think that introduces more bugs. But with Debian and Ubuntu both working on the core of the Debian family, it’ll benefit all. Hopefully the Freespire project also contributes more back into the core of Debian.
What I would personally like to see is a merging of distributions kind of like the idea behind the DCC, where everything has a base of Debian all packages are compatible, but each distribution has their own share of tweaks that make it better for their target audience. For example, Ubuntu makes several fantastic desktop set up. But if I were to run a server, I think I would still stick with Debian proper. Same thing with Freespire, it makes a good desktop distro for new users (though I personally dislike KDE and if they had better Gnome support I’d try it out.) but I can’t imagine any sane person trying to cram Free/linspire onto a server.
Debian’s quality is achieved by not releasing until all RC bugs are fixed, even if that means removing packages from the distribution. So even if the project became worse at accepting developers, as long as it has users to report the bugs then quality will not suffer.
About the synchronization with other distros, hopefully if Debian can mantain a 18 month release cycle after Etch that will start to happen naturally. A 18 month cycle leaves me wondering though, if Red Hat and Novell and put out stable (“Enterprise”) and latest-technology (Fedora, openSUSE) releases, why not Debian?
Of course, you can’t keep a short cycle if you hold up the release to fix bugs that are not regressions from previous releases (that would the firmware issue; if the bug was there in sarge there’s no reason for it to hold etch’s release).
Matthew sure has got the press lately though hasn’t he.
Yea, the firware issue is ugly and I don’t like the idea of putting it off but our high standards didn’t stop the problem from occuring, didn’t stop the last release, so IMO we should go ahead and roll and worry about it ASAP after release.
I do wonder if we should go to stable-server official release and testing-desktop official release maybe. Oh well, whatever they decide.
The major problem remaining for Debian in handling that, is that we don’t have a good way of supporting installs on hardware that needs firmware that we don’t have source for and have separated into the non-free component.
You already got source for your computer BIOS? NO? THEN YOU CAN’T INSTALL DEBIAN ON THIS S****…. period.
In other news: http://lwn.net/Articles/197744/rss
It’s official: Fedora Core 6 will not include the openmotif library, which has a non-free license. The library will be removed prior to the October 2 development freeze. As a result, a number of packages using openmotif (including cmucl, ddd, nedit, and xpdf) will break; they, too, will be removed if they cannot be shifted over to lesstif in the next month.
This piece of news reminds me 3 reich in last century with Holocaust. Damn GPL nazis, you think you are only “pure” license in the world?
P.S. I’m apology if I insulted someone with this comparison.
LWN: It’s official: Fedora Core 6 will not include the openmotif library, which has a non-free license.
Some OSAlert reader: This piece of news reminds me 3 reich in last century with Holocaust. Damn GPL nazis, you think you are only “pure” license in the world?
As this is a Debian thread, I must mention that Fedora Core is just 6 years late here. Debian Policy Manual included the clause saying that OpenMotif is non-free and softwares using it should be ported, ever since 2000. It’s currently Debian Policy 11.8.8.
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-customized-programs.html…
In other words, to “save” OpenMotif-using programs like ddd and xpdf, Fedora Core simply needs to take Debian patches already there.
Edited 2006-09-02 07:43
free software licenses are what got us this far, so i don’t see the need to continually whine and insult when projects don’t wish to ship nonfree software.
“GPL nazis, you think you are only “pure” license in the world? ”
No, I just think that if someone CHOOSES the GPL then they do that because they LIKE what it stands for so they choose to FOLLOW it. As far as fedora – fedora wants “free” software so unless it qualifies it doesn’t go in. If you don’t like it then linspire is waiting for your credit card as we speak.
The firmware issue isn’t about the bios. I have wondered if that would be the next thing to consider though…
Edited 2006-09-02 08:55
Gonna miss ddd.
No, you will not. DDD works just fine with lesstif. In fact, Debian’s been shipping it with lesstif for a long time.
Debian is dying!
Debian is dying!
I don’t know. Netcraft would have to confirm it.
Dang 15 years is a slow death isn’t it. And JUST when Linux was getting popular too. DOH’
Oh wait, how can a project die that truly doesn’t technically exist or in a way exists with anyone who wants to say yes we exist. I will always say it does until I am dead and gone which should last a while so no worries…
It is easy to get this out of proportion; here is a guy making a decision which so far as Debian is concerned is part of the natural turnover/ churn that happens over time.
Hopefully Debian can improve its internal patterns and levels of civility and perhaps the leaving of a key figure might encourage them to turn a neccessary corner.
As far as co-ordinating software developers goes: when I am with software developers I talk about herding cats; and when I am with cats I talk about herding software developers!
After almost 10 years using debian everywhere..
No more mailing list nonsense, no more broken package combinations, no more license nazism for not-so-open packages (java/flash/nvidia/vmware/mplayer/etc), no more “but It’s fixed in experimental/unstable!” when I used testing, no more having to wait a lot to use the latest technologies in testing..(cairo/xgl/latest gnome), no more “I want to upgrade an app, but needs 45mb of upgrades from packages of the SAME RELEASE, that only changed debian packaging revision “, etc
Couldn’t be happier with Ubuntu!
Edited 2006-09-02 09:47
And, like many others, ubuntu’s looking more inviting every day to me. I like a lot about debian. But as unstable has met my needs more than any other distro, it’s been more by coincidence than any real coinciding philosophy of design. Coincidence or not, it’s been the only distro that’s had the packages I want, in the versions I want, with the minimum of forced compiling. That said, I can’t stand the community.
The old joke about people yelling at anyone asking for a remotely up-to-date package in testing will be relentlessly yelled at for not using unstable. And, far too often, someone looking for advice on a problem in unstable will be yelled at for using it instead of testing. The general lack of civility itself among the coummity, lists, and whatnot, is almost a parody of itself. I never really believed people like that existed until I graduated and wound up forced to ocassionaly deal with the sterotype of an anti-social developer who hacks all day to avoid as much contact at all with a world he truley hates. And, when animal instinct forces him out of his hole, lashes out with that hate to everyone forced to listen for even a minute or two. Whereas with ubuntu, I get the impression of people who just like to play around with computers and have fun.
But, at least I could get very early builds of the programs I wanted with the benefit of not having to hog up my cpu’s gcc availability on a daily basis to wade into the folder list of programs that didn’t have official packages. More and more, for whatever reason, unstable seems to have left behind that wild west bleeding edge style with a fairly large amount of its packages. And the 3rd party repositories just don’t seem as plentiful as they used to be.
At this point the only thing that’s been keeping me on debian is a sense of loyalty to the distro whose major accomplishments keep being overshadowed by their use in its offspring. That, and the lower availability of developer packages. I tried out edgy recently though, and to my delight found that situation seems to have improved immensly.
Tried ’em all – and Debian is the best overall.
Let’s remind ourselves of the fantastic OS that this volenteer effort has produced.
Secure.
Easily maintainable.
Stable.
Vast number of packages.
Apt – nuff said.
Other distro’s/nixes may have some features:
*BSD with security/reliability.
Open Solaris with great Dtrace type tools.
RH for corporate support loved needed by some companies.
*buntu for easy to install and great desktop.
Slackware for honed-down efficiency.
But Debian does most things almost as well.
The Debian developers should be reminded that they have produced possibly the greatest OS so far in the history of computing. And that this OS is used extensively all over the world. And the derivatives are the sincerest form of flattery.
Any political issues need to be resolved as the world needs reliable efficient computing if it is to deal with the challenges ahead.
Agreed to 100%
When you guys use the word stable to describe a distro, do you mean it never crashes, or that the interfaces and features never change?
I can’t always tell, and I get confused, mostly because people say that Debian’s best feature is stability. If you mean stable in the never changes sense, and that is a good thing, why does everyone complain that it never gets updated?
when was Debian’s last release again?
… and if nothing else I guess we now know for certain why Debian is so ssssllllloooooowwwwww to get out releases. Actually I’d almost suggest that Debian give up on official releases and just stick to maintaining package repos, using jigdo(or similar) to autogenerate ISO images from a specific branch for people who want/need them…
Beyond that, IMO Debian’s best contributions are it’s packaging system(the ports of the linux world) and the large number of actively maintained packages in it’s repositories, well, at least for x86.
(ppc tends to have packages that strangely have binaries, yet unfulfilled dependencies but at least I can get the .deb src package(manually!) and build/install relatively painlessly, unlike RPM based systems…)
Overall though, I still like Ubuntu as they are regular with major updates, and have one of the best desktop setups I’ve seen from a variety of linux distros(prior exp with: RH, SuSE, YDL, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, SLS, Corel Linux(hey! it was pretty good at the time…), Mandrake, etc.). I still like fluxbox or xfce + ROX myself though…
“… at least I can get the .deb src package(manually!) and build/install relatively painlessly, unlike RPM based systems…)”
Why do people still say this? What is so hard about “rpmbuild –rebuild foo.src.rpm”?
Yeah.. thats pretty annoying to read debian-heads allways claming that. After using apt-get/synaptic for the last 2 years i really cant see its advantage over Mandrakes urpmi or whatever SUSE, RedHat etc used. I found urpmi much easyer especially when compiling src packages and i miss urpmi and also Mandrake ControlCenter.
and let’s not forget the ease of rpmfind.net, extremely rare was the occasion of not finding the right rpm for the right distro for any package.
Nothing beats Debian’s aptitude, nothing, … I do not use unstable but testing instead. I use it at home, we use it in our company. We also use SLES 9, but Debian testing outperforms SLES 9 a lot. We have to restart MySQL daemon (sometimes the entire system) with SLES 9. The only time I had to shutdown Debian was when applying new UPS system. Debian system has PostgreSQL, MySQL, ejabberd, apache2, OpenLaszlo, mediawiki … running on it. Never had a problem, never. Update works like charm too. The best distro ever.
Edited 2006-09-03 13:22
But doesn’t Debian have far more packages available?
I found when using RHEL and RH FC that so many packages which I take for granted in Debian were just not available in RH.
when was Debian’s last release again?
… and if nothing else I guess we now know for certain why Debian is so ssssllllloooooowwwwww to get out releases.
About the same time as RHEL4. And the next release will be out around the same time as RHEL5.
Debian is good for what it’s good for. Believe it or not, there are a large group of users who actually *like* not having to upgrade every 6 months. I’m not just talking about enterprises with 1000 PCs and a well tested standard operating environment. I’m talking about home users too. How often is a new version of Windows released? How often is a new version of MS Office released? How often is a new version of IE released? It’s more than a few years between releases. And yet, more often than not, most home users of Windows are mostly happy (except for the Spyware and Viruses) and are actually resistent to new releases.
Personally, I think that Debian’s main problem is that people are trying to make it into something that it’s not. Debian is the distro for people who don’t want to upgrade too often but want security patches. Period. As such, encouraging someone to use Debian Unstable goes against the spirit of Debian and is just begging for trouble. Such a scheme allows system integrators to create a good standard operating environment and test their inhouse and proprietary customizations to the environment until they know almost every limitations and workarounds that exists so they can support it without too much thinking or digging around for answers.
Personally, I think that Debian would benefit immensely by unifying its 1000s of backports into one repository (since people do occationally need some popular new packages like the apache2, php5, X.org which were not present in the previous release of Debian) and letting Testing be the test bed for the next release of Debian and Unstable be the latest and greatest of all packages and is the source for updates for both Testing and backports. A scheme like this would clarify the roles of various repositories and get rid of the conflicting advice “The package you want is there, just use Testing/Unstable” and “You’re in this mess because you’re using Testing/Unstable”
Under this scheme, the key difference between Testing and Backports is that Backports tries to force fit the packages so that they work with Debian Stable (even if they have to disable features to do it) and reduces dependencies (so can have 99% stable system and just one or two additions which you may tolerate a bit of instability). Another key difference between Backports and Testing is that Debian can support (via security patches) systems that have a mix of Stable and Backports but upgrades from systems that are a mix of pinned Testing and Stable can be “do it at your own risk and don’t listen to people who say its 100% risk free”.
when was Debian’s last release again?
… and if nothing else I guess we now know for certain why Debian is so ssssllllloooooowwwwww to get out releases.
When was the last time a debian release broke X if someone updated it? Want to take a guess…
now if we are done slamming
Debian is slower ot get out a release simply because debian is a large organization and the input of everyone is included. That is just one of many reasons and it sounds just fine to me.
Edited 2006-09-02 16:04
…sounds like Apple elitists aren’t the only rude people on the internet. Shocking.
Unfortunately this kind of stuff is everywhere in EVERY forum/chat room unless, of course, there are strict rules and active moderation. I was on two separate forums the other day (one for autos, one for computers) scolding (in general) that the newbies in the “101” threads were being lambasted for some of their questions. Often it is because people do not use the search functionality before asking a question but still… it is “101” not “Advanced Placement”. Please cut one another some slack.
To my knowledge, Debian has not had a bug like the recent bug that hit Ubuntu (monitors would not work). Now I am not saying Debian is “better” than Ubuntu, but people are willing to trade faster releases for the lack of any major bugs. So you may criticize Debian all you want, but Debian will always have a loyal (though not the largest) following for this (and other) reasons.
True. Debian has a lot of experience in this area. To Ubuntu’s credit, it was recognized as a serious issue and they are looking at a fallback strategy, (e.g. having the X server default to Vesa if X can’t start up) since Desktop distros have to be able to be a bit more cutting edge but need to be able to avoid these disasters where the only way to fix a problem is to go to the command line. Debian’s long release policy ensures that such disasters can only happen during a release upgrade (where the upgrade procedure can document any work arounds).
Stable in Debian refers to the latter–basicly package versions do not change and are only updated for security reasons. Packages do get bumped up if needed during a revision release however; current version of Sarge/Stable is at 3.1r2 as of September 1, 2006.
From the “Debian GNU/Linux FAQ”:
2.2 Are there package upgrades in `stable’?
No new functionality is added to the stable release. Once a Debian version is released and tagged `stable’ it will only get security updates. That is, only packages for which a security vulnerability has been found after the release will be upgraded.
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-getting.en.html#s-updatestable
A fair number of packages do get upgrades due to security.
I would also say the stable version is fairly bug free and therefore should not crash so it covers both somewhat.
I think Garrett’s decision is being made out to be a bigger deal than it really is. If Garrett didn’t make it so personal he might’ve appeared to be a copout, but I wouldn’t blame him for wanting to be part of something that looks so flashy and cool. Debian shares the same problem that so many ventures involving a wide-spanning group of people share, politics. Debian isn’t unique in it’s politics, but like Garrett points out, it may seem more chaotic at times. Politics is a nasty business, people get burned, but I like to view it more as an evolutionary process, than just a means to an end.
Not one of the damn packages he maintained is critical or for that matter hold back a bunch of productivity apps from working.
Hell, you’d think Wall Street just crashed.
I agree Debian can take a long time to let packages get through.
I’ve never even bothered with Stable.
Yes, I only use Unstable/Sid. 5 years and counting.
If I don’t have the latest Java for my development environment I build the package for my systems.
If I don’t have the latest Inkscape, or whatnot and no one else has a non-official package, I’ll build my own.
People are complaining about the people in Debian? Take a look around then entire industry. If social skills were a requirement, intelligence, reason, self-discipline, compassion and other characteristics of humanity were a requirement for a career then flush about 95% of the human race.
Either you work in a field that is full of morons/monkeys or you work in a field of idiot savants.
Take your pick.
Enjoy your weekends and start your own projects to avoid dealing with socially inept pukes who can’t discuss and solve problems without resorting to verbal attacks.
There is no need to become a maintainer when the sources are available. If the community becomes to annoying then another distribution will fork and be realized: rinse and repeat.
One perspective about Open Source that blows in comparison to Closed Source is the fact that people don’t seem to realize they don’t `own’ their maintainer package(s) and aren’t digital gods. Closed source suffers in other areas but knowing that their job doesn’t make them god of some dev list is a blessing. If they do they’ll get canned for being an intolerant zealot who can’t work within a team environment.
You would think with all the liberties and self-discipline it takes to manage small to large scale OSS projects that people could manage to be civil and grow to make the projects improve faster than they do. But then again, we still live in a world where men and women can’t seem to “get” each other.
Have a beer or whatever you choose to drink and go see some live music. You just might meet someone making this “community” less stressful to your life.