LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Christopher Yeoh <cyeoh@linuxcare.com.au>
  To  : Dan Shearer <dan@tellurian.com.au>
  Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 11:38:15 +1100 (EST)

Re: Conclusions on Software Packaging (Linux only, and Long)

Dan Shearer writes:
> with the fact that a functioning open source project involves much more
> than the code being available. An open source project involves a
> cooperating community.

Well I think that many of the distributions would argue that they have
a cooperating community of users.

> I don't regard the Debian distribution as the same thing as the Debian
> collection of packages, even though nearly 100% of it by volume is the
> Debian collection of packages.
> 
> The Debian distribution consists of several items including packages, an
> installer, a manifesto cum philophopy cum political statement, docs
> specific to Debian and a few other things. One portion of this
> distribution is in itself an entire open source project, package
> management. Package management is done in an open source manner by a
> cooperating community.

Whilst I agree that the package management is done in a much more open
manner in Debian than other distributions, with the exception of
proprietary packages that some distributions include, the
distributions include corresponding source packages for all the binary
packages. Although they often don't include the entire build
environment, its not difficult to put together a few scripts to
rebuild the distribution from source (I've done this myself for a few
distributions now).

The development model from many commercial Linux distributions are in
`ESR-speak'[1] Cathederalistic whilst Debian is more Bazaar-like, but
I think its incorrect to say that they aren't Open Source projects
(excluding those that have proprietary bits).

Anyone is free (and has the tools available) to fix/develop packages
and send the patches to the package maintainers (their email addresses
are listed in the source packages). I'm pretty sure an overworked
package maintainer would quite happily apply good
patches/enhancements. I definitely like it when other people do my
work for me :-) 

Just because not everyone can get `check-in' permissions doesn't mean
that its not an open source project. Many open source projects
restrict the number of people who can actually commit to the source
tree but still accept patches for many others. To get a package into
the Debian distribution you need to be a member of the `Debian entity'
(which is becoming a longer process) or get a Debian member to sponsor
you.

> Control of an RPM package is done by someone who has a salary, a boss, a
> deadline and maybe forty or more other packages. This does not produce as
> good a result as giving control of a package to an open source team who
> keep working until it is finished.

It seems that packages are normally maintained by a single person, but
I agree its better to have someone packaging the program who wants it
and actually uses it. That being said, there have been problems where
people no longer use a package or lose interest in maintaining it but
fail (or sometimes refuse) to hand over it to someone else.

> maintainers of the actual programs to a greater extent. Default config
> files and permissions for example are made to suit both parties, the
> Debian packagers (who abide by a set of policies) and the original author
> (who could well have written the package for an OS quite unlike Linux.) A

Default configuration files and permissions should be set to suit the
requirements of the _users_ of the distribution, not the package
maintainers or upstream.

> busy RPM package maintainer simply hasn't got time to talk to all the
> authors and teams of all the packages involved. A Debian package
> maintainer, on the other hand, often has people submitting patches to
> packages and is contributing effort on a volunteer basis.
> 
> This is the reasoning that leads me to conclude that:
> 
>    1) A collection of well-maintained packages is the most important thing
>       for a sound server distribution
>    2) Open source package management works better. As it happens, in Linux 
>       Debian is the only mass example of open source package management

Whilst I agree that the commercial distributions would gain by opening
up their distribution development more. I don't think that a single
distribution is going to be the best distribution for everyone. There
are niche distributions out there that are a better fit for people
with specific requirements, even if they are developed in a more
closed manner.

>    3) Regardless of the relative merits of rpm and dpkg, open source
>       package management is the most important thing. If the rpm and dpkg
>       technologies were suddenly exchanged overnight I would still prefer
>       the open source package repository since would likely still be of a 
>       better quality.

Only if it has apt. I can't live without apt anymore :-) 

Chris.

[1] For those on the list that haven't heard of this before, have
a look here: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/index.html
-- 
cyeoh@linuxcare.com.au
Support Open Source Ice-Cream

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