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Been using Debian more or less exclusively since Potato. And I'm a bit surprised by the tone of these comments and even more by the content of the blog post. To
by rixed 8y ago
Been using Debian more or less exclusively since Potato. And I'm a bit surprised by the tone of these comments and even more by the content of the blog post. To me, Debian had become an irrelevant fossil not because of any technical factor such as those listed here or there (lack of powerful tools to go over packages silos, bug reporting tools, communication tools, packaging tools...) Indeed I tend to believe not following the industry /best/ practices is actually an asset in many cases, sometime even a Debian landmark that served them and their users well (for instance, refusing to stick to release dates and favouring rock-solid new releases instead); Indeed, "they still use X why everybody else is using Y by now" should sounds very suspicious to many ears.
To me as an outsider the obvious cause for Debian obsolescence is, and has been for more than a decade, the growing bureaucracy and consequently the lack of new blood and innovation. This opinion anchored the day when, participating to a Debian bug squashing party surrounded by similarly minded hackers, we were approached by a DD asking if he could check our identity papers in order to "simplify the process" of accepting our fixes.
Organisations, and companies too to some degree, can sometime be best described by what they stand against. Since the beginning Debian has been standing against a hostile environment: I mentioned already the industry bad practices, but also part of this hostile outer world were the negligent upstreams, the unaware users, the cheating corporations and the misguided FOSS enthusiasts. Some bureaucracy was certainly in order to protect against them all. But I'm afraid one of Debian legacy will be that the DD will personify the FOSS bureaucrat, with its 300 pages long packaging manual and 30 steps long contributor approval processes, in the cultural pantheon of the distributions of the future.