[Ichthux-devel] The Future if IchthuX

[David Blue (Mailing List Addy)]

On Friday 28 October 2005 08:49 am, Ben Armstrong wrote:
> Rushing to get out a product will do us no good and our users no good
> if it turns out to be hard to support.  On the flip side, I see you're
> worried that not rushing means the users end up with nothing.  That is
> why I said that as an experiment, I'd support a parallel effort to
> produce another edition of Ichthux based on whatever you would like,
> but that this should not drag us away from the core work of Ichthux on
> the CDD.

I'm not suggesting we take effort away from the CDD effort by making our 
livecd (k)ubuntu based, I'm merely suggesting get something working out there 
so that people don't write us off when we do release our core product. 

Speaking of Debian and things working. I could not get Debion 3.0r4 working on 
my computer. I got as far as a command prompt then un-installed it since it 
didn't play nicely with my SATA drive.

> Woah.  Let's not engage in a "who has the purer ideals" contest.  I
> hope you realize that although our technical visions seem to clash,
> this has little to do with our motivations for being involved in the
> project.  We're really not going to progress very far and fast working
> as a team if we attack each other in this way.  If, by suggesting that
> your vision does not align with mine, you were offended, I sincerly
> apologize.  I did not mean to say that your technical vision for
> Ichthux is inferior or less purely motivated than mine, but merely
> that it is different.  It is no crime to be different.  Diversity is
> just as an important part of the free software world as it is of the
> church.

I was simply responding to how I saw things. I've seen a lot of mention of the 
technical visions of this project. I've yet to see any mention of how it 
shall bring the most glory to Christ. This is my only concern, the technical 
merits of the situation are can get on board on regardless of what they are. 
As Mother Theresa said, Jesus is everything.

So, no I was not offended by suggesting that our visions to not mesh, I was 
reacting to a project that I want to see bring glory to Christ act as if such 
things were not our chief concern. Now, this is the third time I have said 
this, I am *not* in any way shape or form opposed to being a CDD *if* that is 
the solution that brings the most glory to Christ. This is not merely an 
argument of is it technically, or dogmatically superior. Or perhaps it is, I 
reread the original CDD thread (very sparse, IMO) and I only see one argument 
for, none against and no mention of how this is to bring the most glory to 
Christ.

So while I'm not trying to start a war of who has the most pure ideals I am 
trying to ensure that our goals are in line with who and what we say we are. 

> Well, let's not write off technical arguments you don't quite
> understand as being "pedantic".  My arguments are not just abstract
> theory.  I'm not just looking for a "correct" solution, and the users.
>  Building a CDD is highly pragmatic and user-focused.

My concern isn't whether or not I understand the technical arguments. And you 
would be very surprised how well I do understand technical arguments once 
I've seen them. I've not even yet broached the technical arguments. Nor have 
I suggested that your arguments are just abstract theory. Nor have I brought 
up "correctness" of a solution, my position has been and remains that if this 
is indeed a Christian linux distro, then the center of our focus should be 
Christ. Not users, not technical arguments, not correctness, not religious 
adherence to a distro or way of doing things, not pragmatism, Christ.

Now before anyone freaks out and labels me a Luddite or something like that, I 
am not opposed to any of those things. I think they are quite good, and can 
lead to bringing Christ glory. However, one can become so focused on doing 
things for Christ, that one takes one's eyes off of Christ Himself. Also, I 
am not now, nor have I at any point wanted to derail this project as a CDD. 
My original post was merely to throw out some ideas I had for the future of 
this project for discussion.

> > As for my idea, yum and yast have nothing to do with developing IchthuX
> > as a CDD, it has to do with getting the word of God to the widest
> > possible audience.
>
> And this is a good goal.  I do believe reaching a broader audience is
> a good thing.  That's why I encouraged you to work on this in parallel
> with work on IchthuX, perhaps as a sister project.  If we were to
> broaden the IchthuX project goals too much, it would diffuse our
> energies away from ever delivering the CDD.  I hope you understand the
> logic in keeping narrow enough goals and see that this is in no way
> opposed to the broader mandate of the Great Commission.

I do indeed see the logic in keeping narrow enough goals, and as I mentioned 
earlier I was merely throwing this out for discussion. I do not have my heart 
so entrenched on it as to want it as part of the core IchthuX efforts or not 
at all. I was really just throwing it out for discussion.

> I am highly skeptical of the quality of packages that such a tool
> would produce.  The goals and architecture of different distributions
> widely, and the idiosynchrasies of each package must be worked out by
> intelligent solutions devised by the maintainers for each
> distribution.  These differences per distribution multiplied by the
> differences per package cannot be fully solved by automation.  I am
> not saying that automation cannot assist in making packages
> simultaneously for multiple Linux distribution, but you would need an
> AI of immense proportions to be able to replace the work of the
> maintainers of packages across all Linux distributions.  That last 20%
> of packaging that is not merely mechanical is very, very difficult.
> It requires an understanding and sensitivity to the differing goals of
> each distribution and intelligence to come up with innovative
> solutions to problems where there is a clash between how upstream has
> implemented something, and how the distribution requires it to be
> implemented.

Suse is already using this system for their packages, and I've had fewer 
problems with their packages since 10.0 than I had previously with 9.2

Also, the gentoo distribution was started because it's creator was tired of 
red hat making patches to fix bugs/general issues, etc and including them in 
their rpms but not sending those back upstream. (I believe tar was the 
example he used)

And I do believe that icecream is just a distributed compilation system that 
supports building to different hosts/architectures. I mentioned it because I 
specifically remember asking the KDE speaker at Ohio Linux fest about the 
system and if it could compile for multiple distros and getting an 
affirmative response. So it's not a 100% fully automated process  to get to 
the final package. So someone will still have to work with the spec files and 
all of that.