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sm-discuss - Re: [SM-Discuss] stable/testing branches

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  • From: Eric Womack <eric AT lasvegasdata.com>
  • To: Ari Steinberg <ari.steinberg AT stanford.edu>
  • Cc: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] stable/testing branches
  • Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 11:57:21 -0700 (PDT)

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Ari Steinberg wrote:

> Quoting Eric Womack <eric AT lasvegasdata.com>:
> > On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Ari Steinberg wrote:
> > > impossible to verify each program is truly "stable". With that in
> > > mind, I think it would be great if we could somehow take advantage
> > of
> > > the work already done by the much-larger Debian team, and just use
> > the
> > > version numbers that they have already labeled as stable or
> > testing.
> >
> > I don't like the idea of our distro being tied or dependent on any
> > other distro.
> >
> > Building on others work is one thing, what you are suggesting is
> > quite another.
>
> While I agree with the general idea of what you're saying, I think that
> you're taking a bit of an extreme position, and overlooking
> practicality. As far as being "tied or dependent", I don't think my
> idea really does "tie us down". If somehow Debian suddenly
> disappeared, we'd still have their verified version numbers, and we
> could at that point then manage perfectly fine on our own. Of course,
> that is a ridiculous situation to imagine anyway - Debian, much like
> Source Mage, is developed in a very open manner, and it would not
> suddenly just disappear - there are hundreds (thousands?) of people
> involved in it, and there is no company that could just suddenly go out
> of business (it is not as if I'm suggesting we base our work on Red Hat
> or some other potentially unstable company along those lines).

But even to say that we will determine if a package is is stable because
Debian says it's stable is too much. WE need to test is and determine for
ourselves if something is stable. We are already developing a clear
guideline for the proper use of each grimoire is, and I think we should
continue in that direction.

>
> Furthermore, everything we do is "tied or dependent" on many other
> people. By the same logic, one might argue that we are dependent on
> the Linux kernel team or something along those lines. This is the
> nature of open source - avoiding unnecessary duplication. I am
> suggesting that a way for us to avoid duplication not just of source
> code but of testing that has already been done.
>

I disagree, and I believe your extension of my reasoning creates a logical
fallacy. We are dependent on the kernel team for source code, but not for
what version is more stable/usable (linux-vanilla, linux-xfs, linux-ac,
etc.). In other words, the multitude of authors we "depend" on are
producing a product (of sorts) for our use, where as the usage of the
Debian stable choice is an opinion. While that opinion is based upon
their testing in their software, and certainly worth looking at, to fall
back on them for rating a package still seems wrong.

> Anyway, I have to run, will write more on this later.
> -Ari

Talk to you soon!

--
-Three of Three

Eric Womack
Grimoire Guru: KDE
System Administrator
Las Vegas Data LLC






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