Debian? CLI? What for?

[cardinals_fan]

Sorry but I construed statements such as the following as meaning I offended, to some degree at least:

• You're just annoyed that you don't know what everything is yet.
• And, perhaps most importantly, why do you think that you can tell me (a member of the Linux community) what to do?
• you really have no idea what you are saying, do you? you want canonical to take over control of debian? wtf? go and read about how the system works, kid.

I'm not annoyed that I don't know everything. I may not like chaos, but I do like learning and am never annoyed by the prospect. Is that person offended? I don't know, but they're certainly condescending to me, and if they're not offended, why be rude? Further, I didn't know that expressing an opinion was telling someone what to do. The tone of the quoted sentence implies I'm dictating as if I have all the answers, and if I came off the way, I can see how that would be offensive, so I apologized. Finally, how is excessive condescension, calling me a kid, and cursing at me somehow not to be seen as taking offense?

It's fine

BTW, I'm fifteen, so being called a kid doesn't seem so insulting

[koenn]

No,... I'm talking about self-organization within a community along the lines of libertarian anarchism. Without organization you're left with chaos, which, IMO, is never good.

It looks like "chaos" only to those who don't understand how it's organized.

It's too long to explain it all in detail, but in the open source ecosphere, people organize themselves in projects that develop software, then distributions distribute a selection of that software, with some added value such as easy access to software repositories, desktop integration, and so on, while some sort of darwinian selection keeps it all healthy

I don't know if that's anything along the lines of libertarian anarchism, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were strong similarities between the two.

Before you start ranting and calling people names ("those little napoleons"), maybe you should do your homework.
recommended reading :
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/ca...hedral-bazaar/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/ca.../homesteading/

[adamogardner]

the CLI is a view into a community of verbs moving nouns anywhichway I want because these verbs are my workers and I am leader and reign supreme in file village. To answer "Why?," because it's good to be king, although you can't learn to do it in a day, I wouldn't want to because that would be boring.

[eryksun]

It looks like "chaos" only to those who don't understand how it's organized.

It's too long to explain it all in detail, but in the open source ecosphere, people organize themselves in projects that develop software, then distributions distribute a selection of that software, with some added value such as easy access to software repositories, desktop integration, and so on, while some sort of darwinian selection keeps it all healthy

I don't know if that's anything along the lines of libertarian anarchism, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were strong similarities between the two.

Before you start ranting and calling people names ("those little napoleons"), maybe you should do your homework.
recommended reading :
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/ca...hedral-bazaar/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/ca.../homesteading/

I am familiar with the bazaar analogy, which is something I poked a little fun at in the first post (the bazaar is too bizarre). You're right that the 'Little Napoleon' turn of phrase was too harsh. I wasn't intending to 'name call' the project managers. It was just kind of a summary catch phrase for how I view a lot of the ego driven project forks and excessive parallel development.

Someone has stated that my negative view on excessive parallel development is based on unsupported assumptions and is unscientific. I think when it comes to problems this complex, methods of any kind, scientific included, are only applicable with a lot of unsupported, simplifying assumptions. We just don't know enough about how to design and manage complex systems. We know what we've done, and what has worked 'good enough' over the centuries, but there's a lot to learn. It's my intuition that, given the thousands of use-case scenarios that need to addressed, the more eyes addressing a narrower field of view, the merrier (which is in fact drawing a key point from the Bazaar argument itself).

To reemphasize the point I was making about anarchy vs. chaos. In my opinion, most OSS projects function as a kind self-organized anarchy. If it were chaos, nothing would get done. But once you move up the latter to the community in general -- to the distros -- you don't have some kind of fractal reproduction of that anarchic structure, but rather something much more chaotic. I would like to see the OSS community self-organize beyond the project level up to the distro. That means the individual project managers have to voluntarily give up some degree of control in order to support the overall vision of the community. But this is idealism on my part and really reaches far beyond just making a 'great OS' to making a diametrically opposed alternative to the corporate oligarchy that average people are likely to choose.

[koenn]

I am familiar with the bazaar analogy, ...

Most people who know someting about open source have heard the word bazaar. That's why I added "Homesteading the Noosphere" to the reading list. It explores things such as developer motivation, sharing code in a gift culture, forking and the taboo against it, ownership of projects and how it is established, ... . It puts what you perceive as "ego driven project forks" and "excessive parallel development" in perspective and will make clear why e.g. your statement that " ... Ubuntu should take over Debian" is utter nonsense - or at least totally unrealistic.


I don't see anything chaotic about distributions. there are a lot of them, yes. There are also lost of different makes and models of cars, and I don't hear anyone complain that the car industry should get its act together, that BMW should take over Ford and assume leadership and set the standards or call the shots, or whatever.

Distro's are the marketing and distribution channel for open source software projects. If they offer something the market wants or needs, they'll continue to exists. If they don't, they'll become extinct. The system as a whole organizes itself.

There is an overall vision in the community. It's embedded in the free software / open source definition, the customs and values of the community, and in the craftmanship of developers : adhere to open standards, support interoperability, and create programs that easily interface with other pograms.

So far, this seems to be working, and if something like more centralized control would be needed, the evolutionary forces would drive the ecosystem in that direction. My guess is that if two or more of those self-organized projects need coordination between each other, they'll coordinate, or work together the way Ubuntu works with Xorg or Gnome to get the features it needs as a distro, with both the upstream projects and the other disto's that use them, benefiting from it.

And so it comes to pass that a reputedly "difficult" distro such as Debian automagically gets a user interface and provides a user experience that is not unlike the one in Ubuntu.

(and we're back on topic)

[cardinals_fan]

I was going to respond again, but koenn just said it all for me

[RiceMonster]

This was the basis for my apology. I want Ubuntu to be something that you, and apparently most users, do not want. I'm hoping to take on the corporate-controlled paradigm with self-organized anarchy, providing a diametrically opposed system (not just in design, but in philosophy) to Microsoft's corporate oligarchy. It's not just a matter of a pragmatic desire for a great OS. I'm an idealist.

Alright fair enough. I'll apologize as well because I was being a little hostile. Reason being, a lot of people come by here suggesting what you are, and as you can tell, people around here do not agree.

[thtrgremlin]

I realise this is a really old discussion, but still wanted to drop my 2 cents.

As a hobby developer, Bazaar struck me, as said above, really bizarre. It took me quite awhile to get anywhere (A week maybe?). My biggest surprise was just how many projects and tools out there are the contributions of a single individual sharing what they found useful and gave to others because they thought others might like it and/or hoped others would make it better.

Linux Torvalds took on Linux as a hobby project. He didn't expect it to go anywhere, especially since Herd project took the place of a free kernel. He just thought what eventually became Linux would be fun, and initially sought out others that might think it would be fun to hack a kernel together. The rest is history.

Most of my forks have gone nowhere. In part, bazaar made it easy for me to have a central location for code, and if anything came of my work, or if others were interested, they would be free to see it, download, modify, and share.

But despite the "mess" that may appear on my code page, I have fixed minor bugs, and taken patch testing to completion, and even had my work merged into trunks. The first time that happened was SUCH a thrill.

I was originally sceptical about getting involved, and even afraid that my contributions wouldn't be significant enough, or that my questions in IRC would be a hinderence, but what I kept hearing was "do whatever you want, and don't worry, that is what branches are for". As I got used to the system, I began to see how EASY it is to do code comparisons, get reviews, and most people were excited I had noticed their project on a personal level.

Not to get too political, but I see the Linux sphere as the only true objectivist / free market system in existence; it is the only place where by design government has been unable to "regulate", forcing people to work together in some way against their will. Individual projects can be tightly regulated, but each developer has the free will do do so at their discretion, but GPL/OSS et al sends a certain message about the freedom of the work.

THANK ALL that Gnu/Linux has the minimal central control necessary to allow people to be free and aspire as they wish. That freedom has been passed to me, and with gratitude I selfishly contribute where I can for my own learning, and a recognition that strokes my ego... just enough.

That is why I contribute. The only thing that could happen with a tyrannical central authority, as suggested by some; fewer forks and fewer distributions; is fewer developers and fewer contributions, no matter how you may judge their futility. The last freedom embraced under such a system would be for those that contribute their time, energy, and intelligence freely, will be their freedom to walk away.

If you like a project whose constant forking and disagreement on project direction frustrate you, you have the freedom to organize your own team, on your own time, fork your own project, and provide that type of leadership. And to any end you are successful, your contribution will be appreciated and preserved.

To what good could it be to deny that freedom of choice to yourself, and to what good would it be to deny it to others? My heart breaks for those that do not understand, but for those that do, I have begun to see why people become so fanatical about Linux.