For the past few days, I had been reading about Karl Marx, and I'd been reading a number of his published works, and I started thinking to myself: isn't Debian itself sorta based on communist thought?
I fetched the definition from dictionary.com and got this:
With Debian, there doesn't seem to be one owner, it seems to be owned by, well, everybody. It's completely non-commercial, and I've noticed that a number of people willingly contribute their time and effort to the project without ever having any hope of being paid for their efforts (I read somewhere that the combined efforts that went into the Debian project over the last five years could be valued at several billion US dollars).com·mu·nism (kmy-nzm)
n.
A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.
Everyone who submits their work to the project seems to be doing it for the benefit of everyone else, including people who do not actively code or contribute to it. Of course, some of the packagers can get a little testy now and then, but considering that they don't get paid for their contributions, I suppose we ought to tolerate it (unless of course, YOU would rather do the packaging).
Because the Debian project isn't linked to a corporation, it seems as though it would be nearly impossible for it to be brought into ruin; the users and maintainers would have to choose to abandon it. As long as there are people out there willing to keep the dream alive, Debian will have the potential to outlast all the other distributions.
Debian seems, curiously, to be one of the few instances where a communist-like organization has apparently succeeded in doing what it's supposed to do.
Or am I completely off-base here? Opinions?
Might be. I like to think of Debian as a freedom distro or a community distro.
But seeing the recent failure of the debian project, and seeing as this has links the it's all powerful leaders - I would have to say that Debian is looking to meet the same faith as most communist dictatorships...
I would have to disagree since Communism is much more than just everyone owning everything. In Communism there is a central Corporation that makes money (even though that is only a Communist culture in a Capatalistic world) so the people can all enjoy the benifits.
Karl Marx had some good ideas, but he also had some very flawed ideas about people. For one, he thought that all people are generally good with some deviation into evil. Unfortunatly, that led to Lenonism and Stallinism (which are very, very similar to eachother).
Marx also had some weird views about peoples beliefs. You could call him the ultimate Democrat (God is the State type things).
You might be able to call GNU/Debian socialistic at best .... but I think it would be best to call it a joint project of individual developers.
what failure? :'(
But seeing the recent failure of the debian project, ...
I believe the word you're looking for is "communalist," not "communist." There is no central authority whose job it is to represent the common good.
Why are you singling out Debian? The entire free software movement is based on these principles.
Why do you say that this is a flawed idea?Karl Marx had some good ideas, but he also had some very flawed ideas about people. For one, he thought that all people are generally good with some deviation into evil.
Developers leaving due to slow progressing in releasing a stable version. Lastest Arian Bunk left, orphaning a lot of packages.
what failure? *:'(
Most people see it like this, in a years time when Woody is ready for release t will contain Kde 2.2.1, Apache 1.3.<whatever> and lots of other outdated software, like a 2.2.19 kernel. So nobody who's sane would use it for a server setup - and since they then will be 2-3 generations behind the desktop software, they will be left with nothing but the hardcore fanatics.
Apt-get might be nice and all, but if it updates to ancient versions of software what good is it then ?
The defence is that you can use testing or unstable - which in many cases is seriously borked !
The debian way of doing things woeked well in the past, but the project has grown to big to handle - and the most painfully thing is that the management is of the opinion that if someone is maintaining a package out of the goodness of his heart, then they can't demand anything from him/her. This leads to package drifting out of date.
The Debian project needs to realise that it's not their job to decide if a certain version of a program is "safe"/"stable" - it's up to the coders. Optimally packages would flow from unstable in to testing after 7 days, and then into stable after another 7 - 14 days (if no bugs are discovered and all requirements are forfilled of course). Because the current model calls for a painful delay getting stuff into stable, and instead backporting security patchs to the stable series instead of doing the "right thing".
The old release model is a symtom of ancient thinking, it doesn't take in account of the rapid development on the desktop appication side, nor does it represent any kind of sane development theory. Debian includes a vast amount of programs which are more or less useless - 100 mail clients. Debian should strive for freedom, but a minimal distro pack would be nice. Research into which packages are used and which are discarded - and then put the useless stuff on an addictional unofficial cd.
And remember I speak as a debbie here... I'm sad to see this development for my favorite distro.
There's a major difference between Debian and communism. Communism forces people to go along with it. Debian is completely volunteer. Therefore Debian is not communist but utopian. It's what our society should hope for but unfortunately people are getting too lazy to volunteer for such things.
Well, what are they going to do, stop packaging 99 of them and force everybody to use the other one? Obviously because there are 100 packages, people have volunteered to package these things, which means there is a desire for them.100 mail clients
I think the main concern is that there are too many packages, and not enough volunteers to maintain them. I know that there have been several packages that have gone for weeks with critical bugs because the maintainers simply do not have the time necessary to maintain everything they are responsible for. That never used to happen.
Well, what are they going to do, stop packaging 99 of them and force everybody to use the other one? Obviously because there are 100 packages, people have volunteered to package these things, which means there is a desire for them.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks