Dear Debian Folks,
I've been giving serious thought for a while to forming a new Linux
distribution. My reason is to fulfill some goals that currently are
not addressed by Debian or the commercial distributions.
I've posted my first message on this topic to debian-devel, as I think
a lot of you have similar goals to the ones below, and those who do have
earned the right to be in on the project from the start. I don't currently
have a mailing list for this project - I guess I'll have to start one.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
1. Focus on the User
I'd like to have developers who program because they like to see
their work in the hands of users, especially _naive_ users.
Competition with Microsoft and other proprietary systems is a
stated goal of the project. Market share for the system and its
derivatives is a stated goal of the project.
2. Maintaining a non-commercial alternative to the commercial Linux
distributions.
This was one of the most important goals of Debian.
A non-commercial alternative helps keep the commercial distributions
stay "honest" by preventing any of them from having a corner on the
market.
I think Debian's drifted too far from the mainstream of Linux
to continue to fulfill this purpose. A non-commercial
alternative would address the same markets as the commercial
Linux systems, and would be compatible with them wherever
possible. I propose for this system binary, _dependency_, and
package compatibility with Red Hat, the most popular Linux
distribution that has made it to LIBC 6. This would guarantee
the availability of commercial applications for the system.
Obviously, the easiest way to do that is to derive from Red Hat.
3. Provding shared maintainance on the base system for all Linux
distributions.
This is another early goal of Debian that we've not ever fulfilled.
A system based on what commercial distributions are already deriving
from, managed by a non-profit, with shared CVS, might be able to
realize this goal.
4. Maintaining the Open Source standard of Linux.
We're at the point where we don't really _need_ "non-free" and
"contrib" directories any longer - all packages in the system
should be Open Source - let someone else distribute the rest.
5. Open Development.
I am proposing development visible to all, but not a free-for-all.
A core group of limited size to maintain the base system and oversee
the rest probably _is_ necessary. I am not planning to copy the Debian
constitution - I'd rather have the Bazaar-Method management we used
for the first few years of the project.
6. Direct Commercial Participation.
I would encourage direct commercial participation by other Linux
distributions who are interested in compatibility through a standard
base system. I know most of these people, and can probably get serious
consideration from them.
7. Policy Manual
I think a good deal of the Debian policy manual would be usable
for this project. It's a good document, and could be generalized to
all Linux.
8. Marketing On An Equal Footing with Engineering
Marketing is important for getting the user's attention and giving
the user what they want. Lack of good marketing is the main reason
for the failure of Unix derivitaves to achieve market domination.
I would put the marketing team at the same level as engineering, and
have them work together constantly.
9. A Random List of Other Goals.
RPM as the package system - possibly with an APT port later on
(is that what it's called now?). It's necessary to get the other
distributions in on the project. We'd have to add a few missing
features to RPM, but this would be pretty easy to do.
COAS as a system management framework. Non-interactive install.
Limited set of interpreters for system tasks and pre-install and
post-install scripts. How about ANSI shell (_not_ necessarily Bourne
shell), Python, and everything else is a compiled executable?
I'm concerned that Perl is a rather messy language compared to
Python, and both Red Hat and Caldera seem to be focusing on Python.
No obscentity. Avoids legal problems and makes _me_ feel better.
There is lots of room for free-speech distribution sites on the net.
Pursuit of the 86open goals - an Open Source binary compatibility
standard for operating systems, provided in source code form rather
than as a paper document (at least at the start).
Thanks
Bruce Perens
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