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发信人: reden (On the way!), 信区: Linux
标  题: The LSB is dead - Long live the LSB
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Mon Mar  8 21:40:43 1999)

  Editorial: The LSB is dead - Long live the LSB

  Jim Pick - August 15th 1998, 11:54 EST


  Jim Pick originally intended to delve into some technical details

  about the differences between Debian and Red Hat and what obstacles

  lay in store for the LSB team. Due to the obscure activity that took

  place on the LSB mailing list (including Bruce Perens leaving the

  project), he changed his editorial to reflect the pros/cons of

  diversity in the Linux distribution space and what benefits there

  would be to have a LSB/LCS-style project.


  The LSB is dead! Long live the LSB!


  I signed up to write an editorial on the LSB. Unfortunately, I picked

  this week to do it. Oh joy. :-)


  I was originally going to delve into some technical details about the

  differences between Debian and Red Hat (both of which I am somewhat

  familiar with), and what obstacles lay in store for the LSB team.


  But the political shenanigans of this week have convinced me to

  change my editorial to reflect on the pros/cons of diversity in the

  Linux distribution space, and what benefits there would be to having

  a LSB/LCS-style project. I'll try to dish out some of the dirt on the

  current situation (as I understand it) as well. :-)


  I apologize for the length of this essay. I'm not very adept at

  compressing my arguments.


  First, I'll clear up some information about myself. I'm a 28 year old

  programmer / electrical engineer who has been using Linux since 1995.

  I first started with Slackware, and then moved to Debian when the 1.1

  release came out in mid-1996. That same year, I became a Debian

  developer -- so I've had about 2 years exposure to the inside

  dealings involved in building a Linux distribution (Debian is 5 years

  old this weekend). I'm also the new webmaster for LinuxHQ, which I am

  (very) slowly rebuilding.


     Benefits of Diversity


  Why are there so many different Linux distributions? Because, "that's

  the way Linus wants it to be".


  When he wrote the Linux kernel, his goal could have been to put

  together a complete operating system distribution - much like what

  many other free OS's (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) have chosen to do.

  But as his interests lay primarily in hacking the kernel, he wisely

  left the politics of distribution building to others.


  As a result, there are many Linux distributions floating around out

  there. Each is different, some dramatically so.


  This is good, because they all can compete against each other. Think

  Darwin. Each distribution is evolving. The mature distributions (Red

  Hat, Debian, SuSE, Slackware, Caldera) have evolved to fit certain

  ecological niches. New distributions (ie. Stampede, Eonova, Mandrake)

  are born almost monthly. There are already many distributions that

  failed the "survival of the fittest" contest and have become extinct

  or morphed into something else (ie. SLS, Bogus, Lasermoon,

cial applications by agreeing on a common

  filesystem hierarchy (ie. the FSSTND/FHS) and collaborating on naming

  libraries (ie. sonames).


  Determining policy such as this is, well, political. Oftentimes,

  there is no single technical solution. What emerges is a compromise

  based on negotiation. If all the distributions used identical policy

  for everything, there would be no differences between them, and no

  diversity.


  Some common policy would still be very nice to have. Anybody who is

  developing a distribution already has a set of policies in place. In

  the case of Debian, which is a bunch of volunteers distributed around

  the globe, this policy is written up in a formal policy document.

  Debian even has a tool called "lintian" that will analyze packages

  and point out hundreds of places where they violate policy. And it

  has a bug system so that policy violations can be tracked. The end

  result is a very consistent, high-quality distribution.


  Other distributions, such as Red Hat, Caldera or SuSE, have similar

  set of internal policies that have been informally developed, but

  aren't written up anywhere. This works for them, because the

  developers physically work together, and can talk shop over the

  water-cooler. One problem with this approach is that the "contrib"

  maintainers from outside of the company have no idea what the

  policies are, so they make mistakes. Red Hat is taking some steps to

  move to a Debian-style system for "contrib" developers with their

  Contrib|Net system (see developer.redhat.com).


  In conclusion, I do believe there is some benefit to having some

  common policy: increased source and binary compatibility (although

  perfect binary compatibility isn't really necessary or needed), and

  the existence of some formal policy documents for "contrib"

  developers to use (leading to higher quality contrib packages). It

  would be a good community-building exercise as well, as long as it is

  handled with some political tact.


  Jim Pick


--
在江湖中，只要拿起了刀，就是一场无涯的梦。

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