[clue-tech] Per Slashdot: Trouble on the Debian Front?

[T. Joseph Carter]

I should keep on top of my email better.

On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 09:09:51PM -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> Linux.com is reporting that Matthew Garrett, one of the more active
> Debian developers, has called some ongoing problems with the Debian
> project into focus with his resignation. While he didn't hold any
> actual office, many prominent Debian developers described Garrett as
> "high profile". From the article:

Before getting to the article, Matthew Garrett became an active part of
the project after I pretty much left it, so I can't really gauge how much
of an impact he had on Debian.  I can say that lots of people leave Debian
with the opinion that it's too hard to just get something done in the
project.


> "In his own blog, Garrett relates his gradual discovery that Debian's
> free-for-all discussions were making him intensely irritable and
> unhappy with other members of the community. He contrasts Debian's
> organization with Ubuntu's more formal structure. In particular, he
> mentions Ubuntu's code of conduct, which is enforced on the
> distribution's mailing lists, suggesting that it 'helps a great deal
> in ensuring that discussions mostly remain technical.' He also
> approves of Ubuntu's more formal structure as 'a pretty explicit
> acknowledgment that not all developers are equal and some are possibly
> more worth listening to than others.' Then, in reference to Mark
> Shuttleworth, the founder and funder of Ubuntu, Garrett says, 'At the
> end of the day, having one person who can make arbitrary decisions and
> whose word is effectively law probably helps in many cases.'"
> 
> Just wondering if Joseph has any insight into this.

One of the problems I had with Debian is that even the DPL's word was not
law.  Certain people (some of whom are involved with Ubuntu, but not in
the same capacity that they were in Debian thankfully) would simply do
what they wanted, regardless of what the leader had to say.

Technical discussions frequently degraded to personal attacks against a
few individuals, and by pissing off a handful of people in the project,
you can effectively end your "career" as a Debian developer before it ever
begins.  Such a thing happened famously to a person who was sort of
transgender or whatever word accurately describes Kysh.  In a project of
over a thousand people, Kysh managed to annoy two people with short fuses
and thereby ensure that she would never be allowed into the project, even
if 990 other people thought Kysh's technical background was invaluable.

Meanwhile, a few common skript kiddies were allowed into the project
because they could build a package out of someone else's autoconf-based
program--id3 taggers were common fodder for such people at the time.


The "senior developer" discussion came up a few times in Debian.  One
person who would probably have been at that time the best candidate for
that title, Joey Hess, said that he'd resign if his opinions began to
matter because of some rank rather than technical value.

The biggest problem I see with Debian is not that it lacks that kind of
structure, but that it has that kind of structure while pretending it
doesn't, and the people who are actually in charge of things work behind
the scenes to ensure the results they want, rather than actually taking a
leadership position with the responsibilities and challenges that come
with it.



Ubuntu isn't perfect either, mind you.  Given my recent frustrations, let
us take MythTV as an excellent sort of example.  Dapper contains MythTV
packages, but they're 0.18 packages.  0.19 has been out and stable for a
long time, and besides, Ubuntu's packages are literally broken.  They
cannot be installed, and if you attempt to do so, you cannot completely
remove them.  The third party packages fix the install problem as well as
including the current version of the software, however they don't fix the
broken 0.18 packages for you.  (dpkg internally provides a method for a
new package to fix the broken removal scripts of an old one for just such
a case..  That's one of those little technical details.)

These packages were offered to Ubuntu, and rejected.  They're not going
into Dapper, nor are they going into Edgy.  The Debian attitude was that
if someone cared enough to provide the software and the willingness to
maintain it, then it would be available and maintained by that person.
Ubuntu lacks that spirit, in my experience.  Not that it's really
necessary--the maintainer of these packages has an apt repository and that
repository works nicely.  However, Debian has a package, debian-policy,
which can be used by such an outside developer to make a proper package
that conforms to Debian standards.  To my knowledge, Ubuntu doesn't have
such a thing.


My conclusion: All Linuxes suck.  Some just suck less than others.