Oh Boy.... (Ian Murdock on Ubuntu)

[Paul Sladen]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, David M. Carney wrote:

[Moved across here from ubuntu-users] 

> Looks like Ian Murdock isn't too happy with Ubuntu's package system....
> http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/11/2335221&tid=163&tid=90&tid=190&tid=106

I was a bit disappointed with the way the comments have been presented (I
think the basis may have been taken from a Blog entry), but I was more
disappointed by the complete mauling of Debian by the Slashdot audience
---only one post I read seemed to have much overview of the situation...

The article is slightly interesting for one other aspect; in this day and
age of knee-jerk reporting, where inserting as many company names and Stock
Tickers Quotes as fit is common-place, the article remains wonderfully
non-commercial...  It mentions two Operating Systems, (Debian and Ubuntu)
and no companies!

Both Matt Zimmerman and Ian Murdock are Debian Developers;  and they both
also have full-time jobs to pay-the-rent.  For Matt, that is being sponsored
to work on Ubuntu as:  Chief Technology Officer, Canonical Ltd.

In Ian's case, aswell as founding and working on Debian (that's where
the 'i-a-n' in DebIAN comes from), he /also/ has a little sideline
job:  Chairman and Chief Strategist, Progeny Linux Systems Inc.

Lets pick a figure and say that there have been 100,000 Ubuntu 5.04 installs
this weekend[0].  That is an awful lot of Free Software and an awful lot of
Debian-goodness...  There's very little negative you can say about that.

I think whether it says Debian, Ubuntu or Progeny on the tin is less
relevant.  If people like something, they tend to want to give it to their
friends---be it kisses, music (ogg!) or CDs with smiling people on the
cover!

Giving somebody an Ubuntu CD is probably the safest of those three ...you
won't end up with a red-face and you won't end up with the RIAA visiting!
Plus, you know that all your friends will now be virus-free!

	-Paul

[0] The number of installs really doesn't matter, but there are some FTP
stats at http://www.acc.umu.se/technical/statistics/ftp/index.html.en from
the Swedish mirror.  Take 10 Terabyte, divide it by how many 600MB CDs that
is, and then do some multiplying; other mirrors, multiple machine installs,
people dist-upgrading... and you end up with a very big number.
-- 
I didn't know it snowed here!  Groningen, NL