here: <ulink
url="http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence">http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence</ulink></para>
- </footnote> — most of them currently active to varying
- degrees. Each distribution represents at least one person —
- and in most cases a community of people — who disagreed with
- Debian's vision or direction strongly enough to want to create
- a new distribution <emphasis>and</emphasis> who had the
- technical capacity to follow through with this goal. Despite
- Debian's long-standing slogan — "the universal operating
- system" — the fact that the Debian project has become the
- fastest growing operating system while spawning so many
- derivatives is testament to the fact that, as far as software
- is concerned, one size <emphasis>can not</emphasis> fit
- all.<footnote>
- <para>Netcraft posts yearly updates on the speed at which
- Linux distributions are growing. The one in question can
- be found at: <ulink
- url="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html">http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html</ulink></para>
+ </footnote> — most of them
+ are currently active to varying degrees. Each distribution
+ represents at least one person — and in most cases a
+ community of people — who disagreed with Debian's vision
+ or direction strongly enough to want to create a new
+ distribution <emphasis>and</emphasis> who had the technical
+ capacity to follow through with this goal. Despite Debian's
+ long-standing slogan — "the universal operating system"
+ — the fact
+ that the Debian project has become the fastest growing
+ operating system while spawning so many derivatives is
+ testament to the fact that, as far as software is concerned,
+ one size <emphasis>can not</emphasis> fit all.<footnote>
+ <para>Netcraft posts yearly updates on the speed at which
+ Linux distributions are growing. The one in question can be
+ found at: <ulink
+ url="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html">http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html</ulink></para>
</footnote>
</para>
<para>Scott James Remnant, a prominent Debian developer and a
hacker on Ubuntu who works for Canonical Ltd., described the
situation this way on his web log to introduce the Ubuntu
- development methodology in the week after first public
- announcement of Canonical and Ubuntu:<footnote>
-
<para>The entire post can be read here: <ulink
- url="http://www.netsplit.com/blog/work/canonical/ubuntu_and_debian.html">http://www.netsplit.com/blog/work/canonical/ubuntu_and_debian.html</ulink></para>
+ development methodology in the week after the first public
+ announcement of Canonical and Ubuntu:<footnote> <para>The
+ entire post can be read here: <ulink
+ url="http://www.netsplit.com/blog/work/canonical/ubuntu_and_debian.html">http://www.netsplit.com/blog/work/canonical/ubuntu_and_debian.html</ulink></para>
</footnote>
</para>
</inlinemediaobject>
</para>
- <para>One thing that should be obvious from this is our job is
- a lot easier if Debian take all of our changes, the model
- actually encourages us to give back to Debian.</para>
+ <para>One thing that should be obvious from this is that our
+ job is a lot easier if Debian takes all of our changes. The
+ model actually encourages us to give back to
+ Debian.</para>
<para>That's why from the very first day we started fixing
bugs we began sending <ulink
needs of its users lies at the heart of the free software
movement's success. However, while modification usually comes
in the form of collaboration on a single code-base, this is
- function of limitations in software development methodologies
+ a function of limitations in software development methodologies
and tools rather than the best response to the needs or
desires of users or developers.</para>
single free software project to be multiple things to multiple
users simultaneously. This will translate into the fact that,
in the next ten years, technology and social processes will
- evolve so that forking is increasingly less of a bad thing.
+ evolve, so that forking is increasingly less of a bad thing.
Free software development methodology will become less
dependent on a single project and begin to emphasize parallel
development within an ecosystem of related projects. The
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
- <para>By breaking down the problem in this way. Debian derivers
+ <para>By breaking down the problem in this way, Debian derivers
have been able to approach derivation in ways that focus
energy on the less intrusive problems first.</para>
<emphasis>metapackages</emphasis>: empty packages with long
lists of "dependencies."</para>
- <para>The second item, configuration changes, are also
+ <para>The second item, configuration changes, is also
relatively low-impact. Focusing on moving as many changes as
possible into the realm of configuration changes is a
sustainable strategy that derivers working within the Debian
software in a distributed fashion and to, over time, compare
their software and pull changes from others significantly more
easily than they could otherwise. The idea of parallel
- development lies at the heart of the model, the tools for
+ development lies at the heart of the model. The tools for
merging and resolving conflicts over time, and the ability to
"cherry pick" certain patches or changes from a parallel
developer each make this type of development significantly
<para>In many ways, employing distributed version control
effectively is a much easier problem to solve for small, more
traditional, free software development projects than it is for
- GNU/Linux distributions. Because the problems with maintaining
- parallel development of a single piece of software in a set of
- related distributed repositories is the primary use case for
- distributed version control systems, distributed VCS alone can
- be a technical solution for certain types of parallel
- development. As the tools and social processes for distributed
- VCS evolve, they will become increasingly important tools in
- the way that free software is developed.</para>
+ GNU/Linux distributions. Because the problems associated with
+ maintaining parallel development of a single piece of software
+ in a set of related distributed repositories is the primary
+ use case for distributed version control systems, distributed
+ VCS alone can be a technical solution for certain types of
+ parallel development. As the tools and social processes for
+ distributed VCS evolve, they will become increasingly
+ important tools in the way that free software is
+ developed.</para>
<para>Because the problems of scale associated with building an
entire derivative distribution are more complicated than those
<para>It has been said that it is a common folly of a
technophile to attempt to employ technical solutions toward
solving social problems. The problem of deriving software is
- both a technical <emphasis>and</emphasis> a social problem and
+ both a technical <emphasis>and</emphasis> social problem and
adequately addressing the larger problems requires approaches that
take into consideration both types of solution.</para>
<para>Scott James Remnant compares the relationship between
- distributions and derived distributions as not unlike the
+ distributions and derived distributions as similar to the
relationship between distributions and upstream
maintainers:</para>
<blockquote>
projects / to_fork_or_not / commitdiff