Debian: contempt for "end user" values has to stop!"

Peter Garrett peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au
Thu Aug 20 14:48:42 BST 2009


On Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:12:00 +0100
Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

> Everyone rallies around Ubuntu, pretty
> much, so along come the splitters and divide Ubuntu up into 200 rival
> metadistros.

*cough*

Everyone rallied around GNU and Linux, then along came the splitters
and created Slackware, and Red Hat, and Mandrake, and Debian, and ...

Then some people decided Debian was pretty cool, and along came
Ubuntu...

Liam, most of your post was intelligent and to the point, but surely
this is what software freedom means. We are all free to use and modify
the code, or glue it together in interesting new ways, provided we
follow the licence terms and share our code, too.

On another point, some of us have done stuff single-handed and simply
cannot find or justify the effort and time to please or help everyone by
modifying what we share to make it work for everyone. The code is there
- people who want to use it can always do so, or find others to help
them to modify it to their taste.

One example (a personal one) - I would love to have the time and
expertise to modify my little contribution (an Ubuntu derivative that
is essentially an educational toy for those who want to learn about the
console and command line) to be usable for the sight-impaired. I even
built a rough "proof of concept" version and asked for feedback from
the project's mailing list. Silence ensued.

Someone else's itch to scratch I'm afraid - without feedback and an
input of expertise from those who care about this, it will not happen.
Making stuff, as you obviously know, takes time, effort and sleepless
nights. Sharing those comes with the territory, as the expression has
it.

Peter

-- 
"INX Is Not X" Live CD based on Ubuntu 8.04 : http://inx.maincontent.net
Screenshots slideshow: http://inx.maincontent.net/album/1.png.html
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