Really OT: Shuttleworth tries to deal with Debian

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

Hi, in order to REALLY point out the truth, replace ISV by "proprietary
software publishers".

On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 06:20:00AM +0500, gilpel at altern.org wrote:
> Today, if I'm an upstream developer, say the Mozilla Foundation with
> Firefox, I have to work hard to make sure my application will work with
> multiple Linux distributions since each has slightly different components.

That's just because they want to release their own binary (just like any
proprietary software publisher).

> As an end-user, you don't see this. But, for an ISV (independent software
> vendor), this has always been a real problem. Mozilla has the programmer
> resources to handle the problem, many smaller ISVs don't have that luxury.
> But, large or small, whether an upstream developer is big as Google or
> just a guy with one, small useful program, the more work they have to put
> in to supporting multiple Linux distributions the less they like it.
> 
> So, Shuttleworth wrote a long post to the Debian Project list on the
> virtues of cadence. After laying out the problem I describe above, he
> wrote, "I hear this story all the time from upstreams. "We'd like to help
> distributions, but WHICH distribution should we pick?" That's a very
> difficult proposition for upstreams. They want to help, but they can't.
> And they shouldn't have to pick favorites."

Exactly, they don't want to publish the software as Free Software, as such
they don't "outsource" the necessary adaptations to each distribution's
package mainteners.

But really, if THEY want to publish software which removes your rights,
I have to ask myself a question «why on Earth should I help them hurt me?»

So I don't help them.

> Therefore, Shuttleworth argues, "Adopting a broad pattern of cadence and
> collaboration between many distributions won't be a silver bullet for ALL
> of those problems, but it will go a very long way to simplifying the life
> of both upstreams and distribution maintainers. If upstream knows, for
> example, that MANY distributions will be shipping a particular version of
> their code and supporting it for several years then they are more likely
> to be able to justify doing point releases with security fixes for that
> version... which in turn makes it easier for the security teams and
> maintainers in the distribution." '

This is the only reasonable argument.

Rui