| Debian founder calls for more cooperation |
Jun. 16, 2005
In a message to the Debian community originally posted to his blog and re-published with permission at NewsForge.com, Debian founder Ian Murdock (the 'ian' in 'Debian') shared his take on Debian's present status in the Linux world, Debian's future, and what the Debian community should do between now and Etch.
"Debian is one of exactly three Linux distributions that have global reach today," says Murdock, naming Red Hat and Novell's SUSE as the other two members of the troika. Though Debian is arguably second place behind Red Hat according to Murdock (often being considered third), Murdock asserts Debian is in the unique position of being the "only global player that's also a non-commercial, community project" -- in other words, "a force to be reckoned with," in Murdock's estimation.
"Debian's potential is enormous; unfortunately, a big part of that potential remains untapped," Murdock writes, observing that "the industry isn't quite sure how to interface with [Debian]."
Murdock urges the Debian community to make Debian more accessible to the industry. "That means a predictable release cycle" he writes, insisting on a new stable every 12 to 18 months, versus the three years Sarge took to get out the door. Murdock adds that a regular release schedule will also keep Debian derivative distributions such as Xandros, Linspire, MEPIS, and Ubuntu from drifting into incompatibility with their roots -- a serious problem, in his opinion.
Murdock says that the Debian community must also "take the industry's needs seriously," and "better engage the ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs that want to support Debian but aren't quite sure how to do it." To accomplish this, Murdock urges the Debian community to cooperate better with the Linux Standards Base (LSB), a workgroup dedicated to increasing inter-distribution compatibility through the development of a single set of standards and the recruitment of software developers to support the Linux platform.
DesktopLinux.com's latest Desktop Linux Market Survey found Debian to be the fourth most popular Linux distribution among its readers -- behind Mandrake, SuSE, and Red Hat -- but noted the growing number of other top-rated desktop Linux distributions that are Debian-based.
To read Ian Murdock's take on Debian, visit NewsForge.com.
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