[NCLUG] "red hat - the new redmond?" comment from mainstream online media

[John L. Bass]

	I am not a programmer, but this is a clear straw-man argument. KDE is not just 
	any weekend open-source project but a HUGE system with very clear,  
	consistent, and _stated_ criteria about which set of libraries and compilers 
	are needed for the official distribution. By your own admission u r "taking 
	this issue to the extreme". 

You are right ... it is HUGE, (way TOO big??) ... in terms of the source RPMS it is
11.5% of the entire NULL RH beta. But it's also only 18 of the 848 packages in the
NULL release, and therein lies the real issue - where do you draw the line? The
KDE team has a big product and big ego's ... but I don't see them bashing the other
distro's which frequently ALSO do not use the KDE supported library version set.
The only thing bigger than the KDE source release, is the KDE team ego's.

The entire reason for any distro, be it Debian, Mandrake or RedHat is to distill
the current state of the open source world down to as close as possible just one
version of everything so that it has a hope of fitting on a reasonable sized desktop
machine. RedHat has every legal and moral right to shape their distribution and
the products included to meet the goals they (not the KDE team) sets.

	Even  "taking this issue to the extreme" your conclusion does not follow. More 
	precisely it would require every distributer of KDE to include the 
	_particular version(s)_ (by no means every version) of each library used by 
	the particular set of developers (who will use the _same_ version) of each 
	open source product included [in KDE I presume u meant]. Par for the course 
	as far as I can tell.

There are 830 other packages in the RH release, representing over 750 other open
source products. To the extreme, this well could mean inflating a distro to over
100 times it's size simply by including all the versions of the popular libraries
that the developers of the open source products last tested against and accepted.
Not even Debian attempts to do this ... in fact what EVERY distro team, including
Debian, does is do the release integration and testing that the developers and
development teams do not have time to do.

Distro's drive the library set in a release - not a big team like KDE. What may
work with, or break, KDE is hardly a universal set of what may work with or break
the other 830 packages in a release.

You say you are not a programmer, it's clear you also have very little experience
with release integration and regression testing as well. Or even product definition
and consistant "look and feel" issues which are critical for general market success.

The bashing the RH team for their views and decisions is very much like being a monday
morning quarter back ... only the clueless "gods" who think they know everything are
truely wrong, and almost certainly always lack the on (in) the field experience
of the teams they cluelessly criticize.

	Much more accurate & much less melodramatic;->  If this is too much to ask of 
	a distributor they should find themselves another line of work...

Tell that to the Debian team, or the Mandrake team, or even the RedHat team.
I personally was rolling in the floor when I read it ... I'm sure others were
too.

By definition, each distribution team sets out out to integrate the current state
of the world down to as close as possible, one version of each product. 

Stop bitching because RH does what is right for RH. If you want a KDE centric
distribution ... then by all means - DO IT YOURSELF.

Take a long hard look at the Debian process ... the majority of the Debian developers
drive what is accepted for library versions in each release, not the KDE team.

In the end, if a Red Hat user doesn't like the version of KDE on their machine,
they have the freedom to rpm -e it, and install directly from the KDE site. They
even have the ability to edit the RH or KDE teams source release to conform to
their own particular style. At least up until the point the KDE team decides they
know best, and take KDE out of gpl. The KDE gods only know what is best for
themselves, and should stop bitching just because the RedHat team has a different
view of their product and possibly their  customers needs/wants/desires.

Personally I do not agree with the KDE team whines about single click ... having a
single click product integrated into an environment that has a huge number of other
double click applications is VERY VERY frustrating. If RedHat listens to my
frustrations, and those of thousands of other customers, then I believe they are
damn right is customizing KDE to match our needs. Maybe then I can use KDE as my
desktop without having two version of every application launched because *I* double
clicked simply because I am very used to double click environments and applications.


	Best
	Idris

	-- 
	Dr. Idris S Hamid
	Department of Philosophy
	Colorado State University
	Fort Collins, CO 80523