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Maybe I am too sceptical, but for some reason I don't buy your "all hail Debian" message.

"I think the key to restoring the glory days of Debian is collaboration. Debian needs to be a central hub of the free software community, if not the hub."

Really? Why should it a be a central hub for the free software community? What makes you think it's even possible for the free software community (Who is the free software community for that matter? Does this include Redhat or Novell?) to have a hub?

"It should have a mandate to develop tools that help the community collaborate. It should serve as a model for how to develop and deliver high-quality free software."

How are you going to implement this mandate? And why should Debian be in charge? You might think they are the holy grail of free software, but not everyone (thankfully) agrees with you. If Debian cannot manage itself, why should it be a model for free software? Yo might think that Debian is a model for the perfect free software organization. Many other people don't. For instance, I don't like their attitude towards the Firefox trademark (I mean wtf, don't they have anything better to do? The whole incident didn't benefit anyone at all), I don't like their lack of leadership, I don't like their lack of pragmatism.

"It should set the bar as an unfocused distribution and let others elaborate in their respective areas. "

If it sets this bar, Debian will automatically become 'the one distribution to rule them all'. Once that happens I'll take your ramblings about a model for free software more seriously.

"Red Hat and Novell will continue to do their own thing, and there will always be various niche distribution projects going at it on their own. But for the most part, Debian is the platform on which the rest of the community is based. It's the supermarket for distributions, the bio-ooze out of which innovative new distributions grow. Debian isn't a blast from the past, it's the way forward. Debian is sexy because it brought us Ubuntu, perhaps the sexiest distribution project we've seen in a long time. Debian will continue to be the basis of new derivatives more than any other mother distribution."

I like how you discard Redhat and Novell as some kind of sideliners not really involved with the free software world. You obviously have little understanding of Redhat's contribution to the free software world. You seem complacent about Debian's position as the mother of all distributions. Okay, Ubuntu is based of Debian and Debian has the most derivative distributions. So what? What's your point? How does that make Debian the Holy Grail of free software? All this means is that Debian is a good base for starting a distribution? What does this have to with success in the marketplace? I guess you could talk about Ubuntu, but with Ubuntu I have to say it's not that special. As desktop system it's really not that good. Until the latest release, I believe it couldn't even repartition your NTFS volume during installation and don't even get me started on how unpolished Kubuntu feels.

"Why would an OEM like Dell go with a Red Hat-based solution when Debian has proven itself to be the most flexible platform for creating targeted Linux products? Wherever a differentiating software platform is a requirement, Debian should be atop the list of solutions."

LOL, because Dell is a business! They need to work with a business entity, you know someone who can be held accountable for a release slipping by several months. Do you even understand how a business works? Judging from Hocevar's description Debian's decision making process is all over the place. Dell is not going to waste time and money debating and trying convince every single team about the merits of a certain change that would be needed for their derivative distribution. They want to tell someone what they need and by when, without any BS and waste of time on things like Iceweasel vs Firefox (OMG Mozilla is corporation with trademarks! Evil Alert!). Hell Dell would probably prefer to have Firefox as opposed to Iceweasel as a browser.

"Debian's success is important to everybody that uses free software, regardless of your distro of choice."

No not really, I guess Debian is important in free software's current ecosystem, but I wouldn't be surprised if without Debian we would have more dynamic ecosystem and end user (end users as in real desktop users - the ones that don't know or care about what an OS is) orientated free software projects.


IMHO the real promoters of free software are organizations like Mozilla and Redhat who have been able to crack the end user space (in their own respective markets). When I see my uncle or even a frat kid (examples of people I know who use Firefox) using Debian or Debian derivative OS I'll agree that Debian is crucial for the success of free software.

P.S. I am free software advocate/user and at one point I was helping Firefox (FAQs/support on mozillazine/ themes and extensions that kind of stuff). I am not criticizing your visions of Debian and Debian itself just because I like some other distribution (I actually use windows and I hate it), I am doing this because I genuinely believe that free software developers have to take a new approach to crack mainstream markets (and without cracking mainstream markets we will never be able to use a completely open software stack - think of things like PC Suite for Nokia phones, you'll never get a verion of PC Suite for Linux until we have real end users using Linux). And Debian and its developers' attitudes are very far from what (IMHO) is needed to get mainstream success. I am out.