MEPIS may be going Ubuntu

[John]

Shawn McMahon wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 08:46:58AM -0800, Daniel Robitaille said:
> 
>>"MEPIS, one of the more popular Debian-derived distributions, may be
>>moving in a new direction soon. MEPIS founder Warren Woodford is
>>considering building future MEPIS releases from Ubuntu sources rather
>>than from Debian."
> 
> 
> It's a fork!  It's a fork I tell you!  :)

"Defrocked," I'd say.

It's one thing for a special-purpose distro such as Knoppix, Gnoppix, 
Morphix (and I don't know which if any do) to derive from Ubuntu, and 
for regional varients to derive from Ubuntu, but another for one whom 
I'd hoped would contend against Ubuntu to do so.

We need competition and diversity to prosper, and one who's beholden to 
another doesn't provide the competition, and whatever diversity it 
provides necessarily follows way behind.

Deriving from Debian is another matter altogether; Debian needs the 
polish we and others with determination to release can offer.

There is truth in the notion that, while groups such as Canonical, 
Progeny, UserLinux, Mepis are creating releases from Debian that it does 
not matter that Debian rarely releases, but that only holds while those 
others _are_ doing the work.

It's flattering, no question there, but I don't think it's helpful to us 
nor, in the long term, to them.