7 ms·

Does anyone know of a distribution other than debian with a social contract[1]? To me this is the reason why I never really considered another distribution. [1

Does anyone know of a distribution other than debian with a social contract[1]? To me this is the reason why I never really considered another distribution. [1] https://www.debian.org/social_contract https://www.debian.org/social_contract

tyingq 7y ago
Parabola, based on Arch, has one: https://wiki.parabola.nu/Parabola_Social_Contract https://wiki.parabola.nu/Parabola_Social_Contract
- miclill 7y ago
  Thanks. There is a spelling mistake here: "...and adhocratic it its form,..." I think it should be: "...and adhocratic in its form,..." Can't find a way to edit the wiki. Anybody know how to contact the people behind the project?
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    From clicking on the header I can see two emails in the bottom of the page and the right column has `People` and `Hackers` section which both lead to pages full of email.
seqizz 7y ago
Gentoo also has it: https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contract.html https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contrac...
nextos 7y ago
That's the great thing about Debian. A great community with a clear purpose. But I think their tooling and policies have become outdated, which prevents faster progress. I wish they would switch to some Nix-like alternative, which was discussed in their developer list long ago. The genius of Nix is that packages do not need to depend on the same dependencies. Hence, the whole package tree does not need to be kept in sync. Another great advantage are declarative package specifications. I maintain several packages for NixOS, and a bot does auto-updates for me. I just check upstream hasn't introduced any malicious code. Lastly, shipping many "distributions" becomes trivial with Nix. A distribution is just a package channel plus a declarative setup written in a small half-a-page expression. So you can easily create a minimal Debian, a Debian with a GNOME desktop, a Debian with a Xface desktop, a Debian with a KDE desktop, etc.
- rhn_mk1 7y ago
  > packages do not need to depend on the same dependencies It's a blessing, and a curse. In order to ensure the quality for all packages, now you have to keep all versions anything depends on in check. A bug fix applied to the most recent version doesn't automatically affect packages depending on it, so all of them need to be updated too now. This is similar to the reason that Debian doesn't accept packages which vendor any dependencies (similar to Fedora). > declarative package specifications I tried making RPM, .deb, and Nix packages, and I found Nix to be by far the nicest to work with.
  - stingraycharles 7y ago
    While I agree with what you say, the dependency tree becomes more complex, I’ve found the alternative much, much worse. You can also “mimic” the old behavior by just forcing all the libraries to compile against a specific version of a library, thereby simplifying your dependency free again. In other words, Nix’ approach gives you the choice, while the current approach forces you into a certain direction.
  - m45t3r 7y ago
    > A bug fix applied to the most recent version doesn't automatically affect packages depending on it, so all of them need to be updated too now. This is untrue. Everytime that a package is updated, thanks to NixOS declarative build system, all packages that depend on it are also rebuild/updated. Unless you're pinning your derivations, it works even on custom packages created by you.
    - rhn_mk1 7y ago
      That makes sense, but every pinned package contributes to the packaging burden. In order to reduce the burden to what traditional distributions have to deal with, pinning would have to be disallowed, which now resembles the traditional approach a lot, with one version per package.
      - m45t3r 7y ago
orblivion 7y ago
I'm glad this exists. However what I'd look for in a social contract is something about the level of technical support the users should expect. When the issue of free software support comes up, too often I see the usual "OUR COMMUNITY IS NOT YOUR FREE TECHNICAL SUPPORT WE OWE YOU NOTHING"... o..okay, fair enough. I can't waltz into your community and demand your time for free... But you _do_ want me to use your system, right? You _do_ think that Free Software is a viable alternative to proprietary software, where the creators literally _owe me_ support for their software because I paid them for it? That's why it would be nice if they laid out exactly what it is that they are committing themselves to. Not just writing code and putting the thing together, but a certain (of course not unlimited) amount of assistance, so I know I won't be totally left hanging. Maybe some OSes are too much of a hobby or experiment and they don't want to offer that level of support. Totally fine. We should expect that sort of thing in the social contract, so users know what they're getting themselves into, and so that we can all step back and evaluate whether Free Software is a viable alternative to propriety yet.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Whats worse is they could you know.... Just charge for support. I believe Ubuntu and RedHat do this? May as well just use Ubuntu instead I guess? I used to be big on Ubuntu / Debian but after trying openSUSE I dont know if I can stick to either anymore.
  - orblivion 7y ago
    I never thought to get paid Ubuntu support for some reason. I really should consider it. I'm moving onto Qubes now. I understand if they don't want to organize such a thing. It would be nice if there were indeed a 3rd party paid support option, and they could just link to it.
- LfLxfxxLxfxx 7y ago
  You can buy support from a third party.
  - 7y ago

tyingq 7y ago

Parabola, based on Arch, has one: https://wiki.parabola.nu/Parabola_Social_Contract https://wiki.parabola.nu/Parabola_Social_Contract

miclill 7y ago
Thanks. There is a spelling mistake here: "...and adhocratic it its form,..." I think it should be: "...and adhocratic in its form,..." Can't find a way to edit the wiki. Anybody know how to contact the people behind the project?
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  From clicking on the header I can see two emails in the bottom of the page and the right column has `People` and `Hackers` section which both lead to pages full of email.

seqizz 7y ago

Gentoo also has it: https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contract.html https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contrac...

nextos 7y ago

That's the great thing about Debian. A great community with a clear purpose. But I think their tooling and policies have become outdated, which prevents faster progress. I wish they would switch to some Nix-like alternative, which was discussed in their developer list long ago. The genius of Nix is that packages do not need to depend on the same dependencies. Hence, the whole package tree does not need to be kept in sync. Another great advantage are declarative package specifications. I maintain several packages for NixOS, and a bot does auto-updates for me. I just check upstream hasn't introduced any malicious code. Lastly, shipping many "distributions" becomes trivial with Nix. A distribution is just a package channel plus a declarative setup written in a small half-a-page expression. So you can easily create a minimal Debian, a Debian with a GNOME desktop, a Debian with a Xface desktop, a Debian with a KDE desktop, etc.

rhn_mk1 7y ago
> packages do not need to depend on the same dependencies It's a blessing, and a curse. In order to ensure the quality for all packages, now you have to keep all versions anything depends on in check. A bug fix applied to the most recent version doesn't automatically affect packages depending on it, so all of them need to be updated too now. This is similar to the reason that Debian doesn't accept packages which vendor any dependencies (similar to Fedora). > declarative package specifications I tried making RPM, .deb, and Nix packages, and I found Nix to be by far the nicest to work with.
- stingraycharles 7y ago
  While I agree with what you say, the dependency tree becomes more complex, I’ve found the alternative much, much worse. You can also “mimic” the old behavior by just forcing all the libraries to compile against a specific version of a library, thereby simplifying your dependency free again. In other words, Nix’ approach gives you the choice, while the current approach forces you into a certain direction.
- m45t3r 7y ago
  > A bug fix applied to the most recent version doesn't automatically affect packages depending on it, so all of them need to be updated too now. This is untrue. Everytime that a package is updated, thanks to NixOS declarative build system, all packages that depend on it are also rebuild/updated. Unless you're pinning your derivations, it works even on custom packages created by you.
  - rhn_mk1 7y ago
    That makes sense, but every pinned package contributes to the packaging burden. In order to reduce the burden to what traditional distributions have to deal with, pinning would have to be disallowed, which now resembles the traditional approach a lot, with one version per package.
    - m45t3r 7y ago

orblivion 7y ago

I'm glad this exists. However what I'd look for in a social contract is something about the level of technical support the users should expect. When the issue of free software support comes up, too often I see the usual "OUR COMMUNITY IS NOT YOUR FREE TECHNICAL SUPPORT WE OWE YOU NOTHING"... o..okay, fair enough. I can't waltz into your community and demand your time for free... But you _do_ want me to use your system, right? You _do_ think that Free Software is a viable alternative to proprietary software, where the creators literally _owe me_ support for their software because I paid them for it? That's why it would be nice if they laid out exactly what it is that they are committing themselves to. Not just writing code and putting the thing together, but a certain (of course not unlimited) amount of assistance, so I know I won't be totally left hanging. Maybe some OSes are too much of a hobby or experiment and they don't want to offer that level of support. Totally fine. We should expect that sort of thing in the social contract, so users know what they're getting themselves into, and so that we can all step back and evaluate whether Free Software is a viable alternative to propriety yet.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Whats worse is they could you know.... Just charge for support. I believe Ubuntu and RedHat do this? May as well just use Ubuntu instead I guess? I used to be big on Ubuntu / Debian but after trying openSUSE I dont know if I can stick to either anymore.
- orblivion 7y ago
  I never thought to get paid Ubuntu support for some reason. I really should consider it. I'm moving onto Qubes now. I understand if they don't want to organize such a thing. It would be nice if there were indeed a 3rd party paid support option, and they could just link to it.
LfLxfxxLxfxx 7y ago
You can buy support from a third party.
- 7y ago