Howdy, I'm a sysadmin of the Unix half of a small University main server room. Recently we have been trying to decide on a replacement for FreeBSD for 14 servers.
I favor Debian, however I can't make that decision on my own. I found it was a challenge to convince others in the decision making process that Debian is solid and here to stay when the Dunc Tanc causes the Weekly News to drop out of consistent appearance. I know there are alternate sources of information, but one must consider that non-Linux users are amongst the visitors of the Debian project web site. It is small things about the web site for Debian which make Debian look less maintained than it really is. I understand the political tug of war the DWN editor is involved in, but in the end, holding a gun to the head of what you like isn't helping anything. The missing DWN is one missing piece of "product" continuity, and reading the "why" just makes things worse. The people involved are shown to be struggling for their individual rights on the same level as teenagers refusing to return someones possessions until the other person returns something they are missing (regardless of whether they really need it). Principled self-righteousness is something that even 6 year olds can master (I have one). Its absence in mature people is sometimes mistaken for lack of awareness or apathy. It would be great if snarls between perspectives of developers had no impact on DWM and other aspects of Debian. If a person developing Debian truly loves what they are doing, the Dunc Tanc should have no impact on what they are contributing either way. One way to protest it is to ignore it and stick to the essentials. It might seem insane, but there are people in the world who plant crops while bullets and mines are real threats. There is no point protesting when what you need to do is ensure you have food to live on in the future. It is the same with Debian. It will only grow stronger with continued efforts of volunteers. If it woobles and appears like the project web site of something much smaller, decision makers will not trust Debian as a mature, robust and trustworthy source of Linux and Linux applications. So far, I have failed to convince other decision makers that Debian deserves more roles in our server room, and we are headed to adoption of Redhat. Yes, it is insane that decisions like this are made by someone with 20 minutes of experience installing Linux, but that it how it is. They might have been more willing to consider my opinion if Debian's web appearance, newsletters, etc. demonstrated that Debian is backed by a "thousand plus" highly talented developers. Typically when I have criticism of something open source, I hear back retorts of "why don't you volunteer to fix it?". I will answer that right now. It takes all kinds of people to make Debian a success, not only people writing code and documentation. I have contributed to open source projects where I've had the time and talent to do so. At the current stage of my life I don't have the time to do more. So my main role in supporting it will be advocate, user, product demonstrator and perhaps once in awhile, commenter. If there are other users who also feel this issue has degraded the appearance of the Debian project and its web site, you might share your view. --Donald
