From: mako@atdot.cc <> Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 15:17:49 +0000 (-0400) Subject: Merged in changes from Mika's corrections. X-Git-Url: https://projects.mako.cc/source/to_fork_or_not/commitdiff_plain/1a659e5c80e31116bd3ce0b0e1acaf8a650a76b4 Merged in changes from Mika's corrections. --- diff --git a/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.xml b/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.xml index d624cac..dfd08b2 100644 --- a/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.xml +++ b/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.xml @@ -286,22 +286,23 @@ here: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence - — 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 and 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 can not fit - all. - Netcraft posts yearly updates on the speed at which - Linux distributions are growing. The one in question can - be found at: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html + — 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 and 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 can not fit all. + Netcraft posts yearly updates on the speed at which + Linux distributions are growing. The one in question can be + found at: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html @@ -406,10 +407,10 @@ 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: - The entire post can be read here: http://www.netsplit.com/blog/work/canonical/ubuntu_and_debian.html + development methodology in the week after the first public + announcement of Canonical and Ubuntu: The + entire post can be read here: http://www.netsplit.com/blog/work/canonical/ubuntu_and_debian.html @@ -435,9 +436,10 @@ - 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. + 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. That's why from the very first day we started fixing bugs we began sending @@ -515,7 +517,7 @@ 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 @@ -580,7 +582,7 @@ - By breaking down the problem in this way. Debian derivers + 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. @@ -604,7 +606,7 @@ metapackages: empty packages with long lists of "dependencies." - The second item, configuration changes, are also + 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 @@ -728,7 +730,7 @@ 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 @@ -743,14 +745,15 @@ 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. + 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. Because the problems of scale associated with building an entire derivative distribution are more complicated than those @@ -801,12 +804,12 @@ 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 and a social problem and + both a technical and social problem and adequately addressing the larger problems requires approaches that take into consideration both types of solution. 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: