5 ms·

If you ever read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"... Debian feels very far from this original vision, endless drama and politics. Similar to Gnome and Mozilla. I

If you ever read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"... Debian feels very far from this original vision, endless drama and politics. Similar to Gnome and Mozilla. I am very happy with OpenSuse.

aidenn0 5y ago
Is debian supposed to be a cathedral or a bazaar?
- cryptonector 5y ago
  A cathedral around the bazaar.
nextaccountic 5y ago
I just saw that Debian might remove the "which" command (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026623), apparently with little reason? Which is bonkers
- Taywee 5y ago
  There was a proposal, disagreement, and a vote, which ruled in keeping the "which" command where it is for at least the next major version. "which" is in no danger of disappearing at the moment. The discussion went approximately: "`which` is nonstandard and doesn't always work the same. Maybe we should remove it and have everybody use `command -v` instead, which is standard. Also, in testing, I've added a deprecation notice to prepare for it." "Let's have a vote to see. A lot of people use `which`, and that deprecation notice breaks some builds. ... Vote says no. Remove the deprecation notice and leave `which` where it is for the next release" Later, on Hacker News: "Debian might be removing "which"! Why are they doing this?" Most of the commenters, it seems, never actually read the entire story.
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    It's stupid. An immense and completely unjustified waste of time. which(1) requires maintenance no more than once per decade. In terms of the amount of maintenance that which(1) requires, the entire debate took centuries' worth of the maintainer's time to settle, and much more of everyone else's time. The entire effort to get others to switch from which(1) will take untold amounts of _their_ time. In conclusion: Debian couldn't care less about their users' time. No respect for the users. I'm trying to make my real thoughts on this palpable. Idiotic doesn't even begin to cover it.
    - md8z 5y ago
      I think it may benefit to take a step back before assuming bad faith. The issue was (and still is) that "which" is not portable and it's difficult to detect what version you have installed.
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        Depraved indifference (we don't care how much this will annoy users) rather than bad faith. Given the lack of maintenance burden and the amount of stuff that would break in $bignum scripts, the idea that removing it was seriously even considered speaks volumes.
        md8z 5y ago
        I'm not sure what "volumes" you're talking about. Those scripts already risk being broken and causing maintenance burden by depending on the non-standard behavior in the first place. If you actually had this specified in your dependencies then it would be easy to spot the necessary change and fix it.
        cryptonector 5y ago
        Nonsense. The proposed change is indefensible.

If you ever read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"... Debian feels very far from this original vision, endless drama and politics. Similar to Gnome and Mozilla. I am very happy with OpenSuse.

aidenn0 5y ago

Is debian supposed to be a cathedral or a bazaar?

cryptonector 5y ago
A cathedral around the bazaar.

nextaccountic 5y ago

I just saw that Debian might remove the "which" command (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026623), apparently with little reason? Which is bonkers

Taywee 5y ago
There was a proposal, disagreement, and a vote, which ruled in keeping the "which" command where it is for at least the next major version. "which" is in no danger of disappearing at the moment. The discussion went approximately: "`which` is nonstandard and doesn't always work the same. Maybe we should remove it and have everybody use `command -v` instead, which is standard. Also, in testing, I've added a deprecation notice to prepare for it." "Let's have a vote to see. A lot of people use `which`, and that deprecation notice breaks some builds. ... Vote says no. Remove the deprecation notice and leave `which` where it is for the next release" Later, on Hacker News: "Debian might be removing "which"! Why are they doing this?" Most of the commenters, it seems, never actually read the entire story.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  It's stupid. An immense and completely unjustified waste of time. which(1) requires maintenance no more than once per decade. In terms of the amount of maintenance that which(1) requires, the entire debate took centuries' worth of the maintainer's time to settle, and much more of everyone else's time. The entire effort to get others to switch from which(1) will take untold amounts of _their_ time. In conclusion: Debian couldn't care less about their users' time. No respect for the users. I'm trying to make my real thoughts on this palpable. Idiotic doesn't even begin to cover it.
  - md8z 5y ago
    I think it may benefit to take a step back before assuming bad faith. The issue was (and still is) that "which" is not portable and it's difficult to detect what version you have installed.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Depraved indifference (we don't care how much this will annoy users) rather than bad faith. Given the lack of maintenance burden and the amount of stuff that would break in $bignum scripts, the idea that removing it was seriously even considered speaks volumes.
      - md8z 5y ago
        I'm not sure what "volumes" you're talking about. Those scripts already risk being broken and causing maintenance burden by depending on the non-standard behavior in the first place. If you actually had this specified in your dependencies then it would be easy to spot the necessary change and fix it.
        cryptonector 5y ago
        Nonsense. The proposed change is indefensible.