Why Debian is different

By Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 19 August 2008 06:07

Opinion and Analysis

Can a distribution that serves as the base for others to profit keep its own userbase? Most definitely - indeed, in many cases, people have begun using Linux by installing Debian derivatives. They then find that the old man is much better than the children and switch to Debian, simply because it encapsulates many of the pluses that one cannot find in newer distributions.

Murdock also wrote that the Debian design process would be open "to ensure that the system is of the highest quality and that it reflects the needs of the user community." The quality comes from the fact that members of the Debian community are there because they want to be, not because they have to.

And keeping the project open ensures, in Murdock's words, that "components are of high quality because those with expertise in a certain area are given the opportunity to construct or maintain the individual components of Debian involving that area. Involving others also ensures that valuable suggestions for improvement can be incorporated into the distribution during its development; thus, a distribution is created based on the needs and wants of the users rather than the needs and wants of the constructor."

Of course, no project is perfect and Debian is no exception. There have been periods in its short history when critics of the project (and boy, are there any number of them!) have speculated wildly about Debian being at a "crossroads." But no critic goes further when the project does get across that famous crossroads.

It's interesting to delve a little further into the reason why a non-commercial FOSS project attracts so much criticism. It's simply because the detractors fail to understand how something which could well be described as India once was - a functioning anarchy - can draw on the gifts of more than 1000 highly opinionated people and produce software that is of such high quality.

If one were to go by the logic of these critics, then nothing should emerge from the Debian portals except strong opinions. It is easy for these critics to understand a commercial corporation that distributes Linux - the profit motive is comprehensible even by the feeblest of minds.

The motive behind being part of Debian isn't that easily understood. The 11th and current Debian leader, Steve McIntyre, probably said it best: "Instead of people who are paid to do work as a day job, we have people around the world who are working on this because they passionately believe in what they are doing. It may not be the most efficient - we cannot promise a release every 12 months, for example, - but we have people who really want to do things like packaging etc the right way, not just working towards a deadline. We don't necessarily have to do something a particular way - we can do the right thing."

Disclosure: As mentioned many times before, I've been a Debian user for the last eight years and use the AMD64, x86 and MIPS ports of the distribution.